Four-year-old girl used as collateral in Cambodia

A four-year-old girl, who was kept as collateral with another woman by a Cambodian mother who needed a loan, was chained to a post for eight hours a day for two years, media reported Monday.

Police arrested the four-year-old girl's adoptive mother but decided not to charge her due to her own poverty-stricken circumstances, the Phnom Penh Post reported.

Police and rights group Adhoc found the small girl sitting on the floor with a chain padlocked around her ankle.

"We think that the mother is so poor that she did not have any way of looking after the girl," said Srey Touch, head of the Koh Kong police's human rights and juvenile protection unit.

The adoptive mother said the girl used to get in the rainwater and get messy and she feared she may leave the house and drown or get lost.

The girl told police that on one occasion she was so thirsty that she had to drink her own urine.

The girl is now in the care of social workers.

Police said the "adoptive mother", who had loaned money to the child's biological mother had taken the four-year-old as collateral against the loan, but found it impossible to care for the girl during the day because she had to go to work.

The adoptive mother worked as a farmer at a plantation about half a mile from the hut. She chained the child each workday from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. and then from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., the report said.

Police were alerted to the girl's plight by Keo Chhon, a 60-year-old village resident who told the Post: "I felt so much pity for her. It is so bad".