PHNOM PENH — A 20-year-old Cambodian man was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday for taking his 13-year-old girlfriend — a princess from the Norodom branch of the royal family — to live with him in Thailand last year.
The Phnom Penh Post reported that Ny Visal also was fined 5 million riel (about 41,000 baht) for removing the girl from her family home in the capital a month before his June 2013 arrest in Thailand.
Phnom Penh Municipal Court judge Heng Sokna convicted Visal - who returned to Thailand earlier this year to work in construction - under human-trafficking and sexual-exploitation laws. He was found guilty of "unlawful removal of a minor" and having sex with a minor and given the maximum sentence.
Visal defended himself by saying the girl had chosen to live with him and that he had not abducted her. She stayed with him in Thailand for two weeks before being caught.
"She was my girlfriend and she was not underage," the newspaper quoted Visal as saying outside the courtroom. "When we started loving each other, she told me that she was 16 years old. And we both had loved each other for over a year before we were separated by her family because they disliked me (because) I was poor."
Visal's mother told the Post that the couple met while Visal was studying cooking in Phnom Penh and lived near the royals' house. She backed up his story that the child princess loved him, but the wealthy family disliked the 20-year-old because he was from a poor farming family.
She claimed their love persisted even after her son returned to Thailand this year, with the girl attempting suicide several times.
Neither the girl's family nor her lawyer could be reached for comment yesterday.