A boy is 17 years old, but his IQ is just like a 10-year-old boy. He was abandoned by his family since his first day of seeing the sunlight. He has been raised up by a poor family. Since he was often getting sick and the family was too poor to send him to school or hospital for medical treatment, they decided to send him to a shelter when he was 10 years old in the hope that he would be healed and educated. Unfortunately, he was sexually abused in the shelter. Then, the shelter was closed and he was sent to another shelter. At the new shelter, he didn’t have any good relationship with others. He decided to run away from the shelter and got to know one man who provided him with shelter and food.
With the basic support given, this seemed a good man to him. The man asked him “Do you want to have money?” The boy said “yes, I do”, so he was then sent to Battambang province near Thai border for work without knowing his monthly or daily wage, and what type of work he was going to do. When he arrived there, he was asked to spray flying insect killer in a big farm. He has suffered from a child labour at the farm. In this period, he is still in the recovery process and has not yet recovered totally.
APLE’s social workers and NGO partner have visited him at the farm. Since there was a request from the boy victim and his adoptive mother, APLE’s social workers and NGOs partners reported this to the village chief, the commune chief, police officers and social welfare officers of the government. Then, the boy was rescued and brought him back to stay with his adoptive family in Takeo province. With this bad experience adding to his past experience of sexual abuse, he is now getting emotional support from APLE’s NGOs partner.
