Thai girl claims she was gang-raped by up to 40 men while her parents were at work

The girl, from Phang Nga Bay Island, claims the attacks went on from May until December last year, and that it involved up to 40 men who drugged and gang raped her. Photo / 123RF

A 15-year-old girl has claimed that she was systematically raped by dozens of men in a small village on an island in Thailand.

The unnamed girl says up to 40 men had sexually abused her over eight months in 2016, taking advantage of her parents working nights to abduct her from her home and drug her before gang-raping her, said the Daily Mail.

Her accusations has shocked the village on Ban Koh Raed in Phang Nga Bay, southwest Thailand, which has a population of little over 100 people.

The attacks reportedly began in May last year, when a man broke into the family home and raped the then-14-year-old while her parents were out tapping trees for rubber sap.

"Because I and my husband work as rubber tappers, we must leave our children alone between midnight and dawn," her mother, 39, told The National.

Her mother told police that the same man returned a few nights later in the company of a second assailant and gang raped her.

Over the coming months, the attacks escalated, and men would come to the family home and force her to go to beach huts where they drugged her and let other men abuse her.

Thai police said yesterday that they had identified 11 of the alleged attackers.

"Local residents are ready to cooperate with police," Yuttanakorn Juanjenkij, a governing official in Tambon Loryoong, told Malaysian Digest.

"Think about children who live in the village. They feel stress as such a claim means their fathers may be suspects," Yuttanakorn added.

"Local residents here are generally close. It is really hard for them to believe such a large-scale crime could have happened in their neighbourhood."

While the teenager has said some of her attackers were not from the island, the high number of assailants would indicate that most residents are directly related to a man she has accused of rape.

As a result, the girl and her parents have been forced to flee their home, saying they feel unsafe on the island after threats from other villagers.