WHEN they found her last week, her father said, she was “bare-bones skinny” and shaking, scuttling like a monkey along the ground to snatch up grains of rice, her eyes “red like tigers’ eyes”. So when the first pictures of Rochom P’ngieng, the woman supposedly lost in the jungle for 19 years, emerged on Friday showing a calm and apparently healthy young woman rather than an emaciated, feral beast, the mystery surrounding her remarkable story deepened.

Sal Lou, 45, a policeman from a remote village on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border, told a local newspaper the previous day that his daughter, who vanished, aged eight, in 1988 while tending a buffalo herd, had mysteriously re-emerged from the Cambodian jungle. She was naked and unable to speak any intelligible language but unquestionably, he insisted, she was the lost Rochom P’ngieng.

On Friday, however, as further intriguing reports emerged of a mysterious naked man who had been spotted with the woman but ran off when challenged, the family began to close ranks. There were conflicting reports about whether they were willing to provide DNA samples to confirm the woman’s identity, and police have thrown a cordon around their isolated home, in an effort to keep at bay curious neighbours and the world’s media.

The family of the woman, who would be 27 if she is indeed their daughter, say they want to be left alone in order to make up for lost time. But Mr Sal Lou’s claims are so remarkable that there is little chance they will be left in peace. Pen Bonnar, a widely respected human rights campaigner in Cambodia, was due to arrive today in the Oyadao district where the family live, 322 kilometres from Phnom Penh, to assess the disturbed woman’s needs and try to unlock the many puzzles surrounding her story.

The remoteness of the village has made disentangling the story all the more difficult.

Mr Sal Lou says he first heard the story last Saturday week of a woman who had been captured after a farmer caught her stealing rice. The naked woman was starving, with wild hair down to her face and a body blackened by dirt. Mr Sal Lou travelled to the Rattanakiri area where she had been found and was immediately convinced she was his daughter.

He says a deep scar on the woman’s wrist exactly matches one his daughter had, sustained while she was playing with a knife as a child with her younger sister, who also disappeared at the same time. In addition, he insisted, she resembled his wife.

Mao San, police chief of the Oyadao district, who ordered his men to provide the family with protection from prying eyes, described her initial condition as “half-animal, half-human”. Despite the many questions that remain, he says he has no reason to doubt she is Mr Sal Lou’s missing daughter.

But there is no clue to the fate of the second daughter, Chan Boeung, who was six when she vanished on the same day. Their father said he had believed them both to have been devoured by wild animals in the forest and had long since given them up for dead.

The woman’s mother, Rochom Soy, 50, said she was just glad to see her long-lost daughter again.

“She is really my daughter, I am very happy,” she said, adding that the woman was showing signs of recognising her and her husband.

She is able only to communicate in sign language – patting her stomach when hungry – and is apparently disturbed, screaming and shouting when her parents approach, leading some to speculate that she is mentally ill.

One theory among sceptics is that the marks on her wrist are the result of years of being bound, common practice among villagers in dealing with the mentally ill.

But with the woman now dressed in ordinary clothes, her hair cut to a neat shoulder length, the questions over her whereabouts for the past 19 years will only grow the longer she remains unable to tell her story.

Guardian News & Media

LOST AND FOUND

ANDREI TOLSTYK, Siberia, abandoned by his parents as a baby. When discovered by social workers in 2004, aged seven, he walked on all fours and bit people; they believe he was raised by the family’s dog.TRAIAN CALDARAR, 7, Romania, found living on the streets in 2002, three years after fleeing his mother’s violent partner. Still the size of a three-year-old with no speech, it is thought he had survived with help from dogs.

JOHN SSEBUNYA, found in the forest in Uganda, aged six, in 1989. He had fled a violent father, and for two years a group of monkeys accepted him as a member of their group.

RAMU, found in Lucknow, India, in 1954, aged seven. Mother said he was snatched by a wolf as a baby. He lapped milk, chewed bones and had an affinity with zoo wolves.

Mao San, police chief of the Oyadao district, who ordered his men to provide the family with protection from prying eyes, described her initial condition as “half-animal, half-human”. Despite the many questions that remain, he says he has no reason to doubt she is Mr Sal Lou’s missing daughter.

But there is no clue to the fate of the second daughter, Chan Boeung, who was six when she vanished on the same day. Their father said he had believed them both to have been devoured by wild animals in the forest and had long since given them up for dead.

The woman’s mother, Rochom Soy, 50, said she was just glad to see her long-lost daughter again.

“She is really my daughter, I am very happy,” she said, adding that the woman was showing signs of recognising her and her husband.

She is able only to communicate in sign language – patting her stomach when hungry – and is apparently disturbed, screaming and shouting when her parents approach, leading some to speculate that she is mentally ill.

One theory among sceptics is that the marks on her wrist are the result of years of being bound, common practice among villagers in dealing with the mentally ill.

But with the woman now dressed in ordinary clothes, her hair cut to a neat shoulder length, the questions over her whereabouts for the past 19 years will only grow the longer she remains unable to tell her story.

Rochom P’ngieng, now 29 years old, first disappeared into thick hilly jungle in 1989 when she was a little girl. She was “discovered” in early 2007 and reunited with her family.

However, attempts to reintegrate her have failed. She has not learnt either of the local languages, Khmer or Phnang, prefers to crawl rather than walk, refuses to wear clothes and has made several attempts to return to the forest where she grew up.

I thought that there surely must be more to report since that dramatic item — had she been re-captured?  Did she return?  Has she at least been seen?

So I searched, and found this June 8, 2010, report, attributed to the Telegraph.co.uk.

Cambodian woman Rochom P’ngieng, 29, tears off her clothes & returns to jungle

Cambodia's 'jungle woman' Rochom P'ngieng

Cambodia’s “jungle woman”, who spent 18 years growing up alone in a dense forest and fled back to the wild last month, has been found hiding at the bottom of a large sewage pit on the edge of her village.

Rochom P’ngieng, 29, tore off her clothes and ran away from home 11 days ago.

She has struggled to readapt to society and her family feared they had lost her for good a second time to the jungle where she grew up.

However, she was found in a ten-metre dugout lavatory without food, water or enough oxygen, crying out for help.

“The villagers pulled my daughter out of the lavatory, and we cleaned her up, but now she looks pale and weak,” said her father, Sal Lou.

“She has no strength. She has been sleeping all the time.”

A local doctor administered an intravenous drip, but Rochom tore it out of her arm and has refused other medicine and injections.

Cambodian rights group Adhoc questioned Mr Lou and his family’s ability to care for the woman, stating she clearly suffers mental and emotional problems.

Rochom first disappeared in 1989 as an eight-year-old whilst herding buffalo close to wild jungle in Ratanakkiri, 400 miles north-east of Phnom Penh.

Mr Lou claimed he is the woman’s father although he has since refused a DNA test. There are theories that she is a victim of captivity and abuse, not the product of a jungle upbringing.

Also known as the “half-animal girl”, Rochom has not learnt either of the local languages, Khmer or Phnang, makes animal noises rather than speaking, prefers to crawl rather than walk and refuses to wear clothes.

In my uneducated opinion, I cannot see why she has been left in the custody of a man who refuses to take a paternity test to prove he is even related to her.

She does not appear “happy” in any of the photos I’ve seen.

edubloggerargento.ning.com

www.giantrobot.com

The following video was posted to YouTube on February 5, 2007, very soon after she was first found.

I certainly don’t know what else to suggest, but if this is all there is to show after remaining for better than three years with “her family,” then it seems to me that there should be some kind of professional intervention.

At very least, the man proclaiming to be her father should be made to prove it.