She has identified at least 150 Cambodian women with unexplained vision loss in Southern California. "I kept seeing women from Cambodia that came to me with basically the same ocular history." she said. "Usually It was something like. they saw their husbands murdered in front of them and cried and cried and when they stopped cryng they couldnt see." She said all lost their vision sometime after Pol Pot became prime minister of Cambodia. More than a million Cambodians were executed or died of starvation under his Communist Government. which lasted from 1975 until the 1978 invasion of Cambodia by the Vietnamese. in which he and the Khmer Rouge were ousted. millions more Cambodians were slave laborers. About 179.000 Cambodian refugees now live in the United States. Ms. Van Boemel Joined with Patricia RoseeKoker. a professor of psychology at California State UniversityLong Beach. to study 30 of the more than 150 Cambodians Ms. RoseeKoker had found functionally blind. Their responses to a questionnaire determined that almost all the women. 51 to 70 years of age. were constantly depressed. All had starved and spent five to eleven and a half in refugee camps and forced labor camps. Many told Ms. Van Boemel that their vision began going shortly after they saw a traumatic event. "I was working in the rice fields when the Communists attacked." said Chhean Im. now 61. who lives in Long Beach with her teenage daughter and nephew. "They were chasing and shooting people so I ran and hid in the Jungle." Mrs.
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