I

t took a broken leg before Fitri Aulia, whom the media have nicknamed “Spiderkid”, promised her mother she would never again climb high-voltage electricity towers.

The 10-year-old girl fell after climbing the 10-meter electricity tower at Duri railway station in West Jakarta on Tuesday and broke her left leg.

Fitri has climbed various high-rise towers and trees around Jakarta, on at least 20 occasions within the last two years.

The girl, who dreams of becoming a circus performer, went climbing whenever she felt upset if her wishes were not granted.

While lying in her bed with the cast wrapped around her thigh and an intravenous line in her left hand, she said she regretted what she had done.

“It hurts so much now, I don’t want to climb any towers anymore,” Fitri said in her bed, accompanied by her mother, Sumarni, at Tarakan Hospital in Central Jakarta on Friday.

“I wasn’t afraid, I just climbed, and danced up there sometimes. I felt relieved after climbing those towers, and just climbed back down,” Fitri said.

Sumarni said that Fitri had undergone surgery on her leg on Thursday but the painkillers had started to wear off; therefore, she felt that the pain in her leg was getting worse.

Sumarni added that when taken to the hospital, Fitri — who is her second daughter — said that her leg didn’t hurt that much.

According to reports from witnesses, Fitri fell about 5-meters off a tall electricity pylon after suffering an electric shock. Before falling, Fitri was walking on the power lines that service the trains at Duri station.

People called up to her asking her to come down, but she kept on walking, then she sat down on the lines before falling due to the electric shock. She fell onto the railroad tracks. She was then taken to the hospital by officials from the station.

“I think I passed out when they brought me here,” Fitri said.

An official from Duri station said that before climbing the pylon in Duri, she had also climbed the electricity towers at Kampung Bandan railway station in North Jakarta. But nearby residents successfully persuaded her to come down.

Fitri, who lives in Ciputat, Tangerang, often takes the train to travel around the city.

“On the day she fell, I felt worried as by late evening she still hadn’t come home. But then a neighbor told me that she was in the hospital,” said Sumarni, a stay-at-home mother of two and wife of a construction laborer.

Fitri, who had loved climbing trees since the age of four, said she started to climb towers whenever she felt upset with her mother for not granting her wishes.

“Maybe this is a sign that I should stop [climbing]. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to become a circus performer, or go back to school,” Fitri said, adding that her mother told her she would send her back to school if she stopped climbing.

A child psychologist from the University of Indonesia (UI), Fawzia Aswin Hadis, said that Fitri’s behavior could be seen as the form of a threat to her parents.

“Her parents might have used to grant things that she wanted, small things maybe. But, when Fitri did not get what she wanted, she did that as her way of protest. She knew it was dangerous, but she kept on doing it anyway ,” she said.