T

he trauma experienced by an abused child is unimaginable. In the latest case, unsurprisingly it took weeks for the parents to learn of their child'€™s alleged rape '€” as their son could not easily bring himself to tell them what had happened. The 6-year-old student of an international school finally described repeated abuse and sexual assault at the hands of a number of cleaning workers in the school'€™s toilet.

 The family, which arranged a press conference to publicize their child'€™s case, has faced both support and anger.

The Education and Culture Ministry has temporarily closed the Jakarta International School (JIS) kindergarten until all requirements are met.

These issues must be resolved, while the ministry should be mindful of its credibility surrounding a number of issues, including international schools. But the most urgent problem is how a scarred child can be protected from any further negative impact, primarily from the police investigation and media attention.

The public and especially the parents of JIS students are naturally horrified at the lax security at the school, to which they entrust the care and well-being of their children for much of the day. The perpetrators and those responsible must be punished '€” but that still leaves the question of how safe our children are, including at reputable schools.

We agree with education experts who say that supervising children is not solely the responsibility of schools. But parents inevitably rely on school administrators to ensure that predators do not lurk among their staff and drivers '€” whether permanent employees or outsourced workers.

On the Internet, pedophiles exploit and abuse children, as the latest reports of victimized students at a private school in Surabaya have revealed. The only positive developments so far has been the way in which parents with children in a number of schools have immediately begun to work with the administrators to increase safety measures for the young. Parents have also shared links on how to educate children on '€œgood'€ and '€œbad'€ touching.

Following the reports from Surabaya, parents have been warned again not to merely give their children smartphones or other gadgets without educating them on Internet safety and without installing Internet precautions.

Last year, the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) stated that 2013 was a '€œyear of emergency'€, given the increased number of reported cases of violence and sexual assault against children, which reached an average of 45 a month; cases that included a number of infants who died after being raped by fathers, uncles and even, in one case, a grandfather.

A reputable international school with arguably better security and more attentive staff than in many schools is the last place one would think one'€™s child was unsafe. The JIS will surely be improving its hiring and recruitment policies, while some parents are demanding that heads must roll.

But law enforcers, educators and parents alike still have much to do to guarantee the safety and welfare of our children.