"The Struggle to Save Teen 'Love Huts' in Cambodia"

"There were consequences to the opinions of outsiders. History and memory have been revised, and meanwhile, the maiden huts have gone from Ratanakkiri. No one builds them anymore in Cambodia, says Ly Sam Oeun. The few that remain are in the farthest villages, tenanted by shy 19- and 20-year-olds soon to be wed.

Some say that the reason for the disappearance is practical. Khmer influence has changed village houses. "The fathers of the girls have big houses now," says Yan Vuy. "There's enough room in these houses [now] for the girls to have privacy." But most people in Ratanakkiri give a different reason. In Krolah, Cha Bai and the other elders can remember the years when the maiden huts were lost. They have trouble speaking about it. "The Khmer who've lived here a long time—twenty, thirty years, they understand us," says Ly Sam Oeun from the Kreung village of Krolah. "They asked about our customs when they came, too. They asked, and then they learned."

A number who came later didn't understand. "They looked down on us. They looked at us wrongly," she recalls. "They asked, 'Why are you letting your daughters sleep away from her mother?'""

In 2003, a Khmer businessman raped an indigenous girl from a village near Krolah. It was about then that most in Ratanakkiri decided to stop building the maiden huts. "We stopped. All of us, we stopped. We couldn't do it anymore," says Ly Sam Oeun"

https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/the-struggle-to-save-teen-love-huts-in-cambodia