Three Jakarta International School (JIS) teachers filed a police report concerning what they deemed to be made by slanderous allegations of the mother of kindergarten student at the school, on Thursday.

Legal representative for the teaching staff, Hotman Paris Hutapea, said that his clients were victims of defamation, as the parent in question had authored emails and WhatsApp messages that accused them of being pedophiles.

'€œShe distributed messages to other parents and JIS members of staff without any legal grounds as if my clients had already been proven guilty,'€ Hotman said at the Jakarta Police headquarters.

The teachers are American Elsa Donohue, principal of JIS kindergarten and elementary school; Canadian Neil Bantlemen, JIS kindergarten teacher; and Indonesian Ferdinand Tjiong, JIS elementary school teaching assistant.

'€œAccording to the messages distributed by the mother, Neil had sexually assaulted her son, assisted by Ferdinand, while Elsa video tapped everything,'€ Hotman said.

He added that he suspected there were attempts by certain parties to blow the case out of proportion.

The mother was the second parent to file a sexual assault report against JIS employees with the National Police. The complaint was filed on May 24 and delegated to the Jakarta Police four days later.

Hotman underlined that the police report filed by his clients was not related to the parent'€™s police report.

'€œAnyone has the right to file a report with the police. That is fine. But the problem here is this parent distributed accusatory messages regarding my clients,'€ he said.

At the Jakarta Police headquarters, Donohue said that the accusation was groundless and underlined that she had a clean track record throughout 25 years of teaching in nine countries.

'€œIt is absolutely false. We love children and we love what we do in JIS,'€ she said.

Meanwhile, Baratha Ramedhan, a lawyer from OC Kaligis & Associates representing the mother in this legal case, denied that his client was trying to tarnish the teachers'€™ reputations.

According to him, the messages circulated by his client were not accusations against JIS teachers, but rather asked other parents whether their children had suffered a tragedy similar to her son.

'€œThe messages were distributed with good intentions [...] in this difficult time. She did not judge anyone,'€ Baratha said.

He said that his client was currently overseas, but had made sure that she would be ready to return to Indonesia if the police needed to question her. He added that the police report filed by the teachers could potentially delay the ongoing investigation.

Besides filing a police report against the mother of the second victim, Hotman also criticized representatives'€™ of the Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) for their recent appearances in the media, which according to him had been unnecessary.

'€œI want to visit the KPAI tomorrow and ask why they appeared on television without making any investigation. It seems that they are only looking for attention,'€ Hotman said.

Previously, Harry Ponto, a lawyer for JIS, said that the international school was planning to file a lawsuit against KPAI for defamation.

He said that KPAI should not have said a teacher was '€œindicated'€ to have sexually assaulted children without any evidence.

On Wednesday Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Rikwanto said that the police would question four teachers from JIS as witnesses in relation to a sexual assault report by the third alleged victim from JIS.

He said the summons would be sent this week and the four teachers, who were currently under the supervision of the immigration office for immigration violations, had until next week to show up. (idb)

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