TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Cleaners seek Komnas HAM help in JIS case
Still on the spotlight: A security guard stands on duty at the Jakarta International School on Tuesday
Change Size
Still on the spotlight:: A security guard stands on duty at the Jakarta International School on Tuesday. The government closed the schoolâs kindergarten in April following reports of alleged sexual abuse involving school personnel, but the National Commission on Child Protection has claimed the kindergarten remains in operation. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan) (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
S
span class="inline inline-center">Still on the spotlight: A security guard stands on duty at the Jakarta International School on Tuesday. The government closed the school's kindergarten in April following reports of alleged sexual abuse involving school personnel, but the National Commission on Child Protection has claimed the kindergarten remains in operation. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
The families and lawyers of four of the five outsourced cleaners accused of sexually assaulting a kindergarten pupil at the Jakarta International School (JIS) are seeking assistance from the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) after a retraction of the defendants' recorded confessions to the police.
'Our clients and their family members asked Komnas HAM on Tuesday to investigate the alleged torture of the clients by Jakarta Police investigators. Our clients have claimed that the policemen only stopped beating them after they 'confessed',' Patra M. Zen, lawyer for two of the defendants, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
The four suspects officially retracted their recorded confessions in court two weeks ago.
The case first came to light when the mother of the victim held a press conference on April 14. She found bruises on the victim's stomach and anus on March 20 and reported the case to the police on March 24.
The five suspects ' Afrischa Setyani, Virgiawan Amin, Zainal Abidin, Syahrial and Agun Iskandar ' who were all employed by PT Integrated Service Solutions (ISS) to work at JIS, were detained. According to the police, Afrischa was the only suspect who did not confess to the alleged crime.
In addition to the five cleaners, the police detained an additional suspect, Azwar, who died in April while in custody in the women and children's unit.
Patra, renowned for his advocacy work at the Foundation of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute (YLBHI), claimed that the four suspects made their confessions during the police investigation because they were tortured.
According to Patra, Zainal and Syahrial said they were tortured by four policemen starting at 9:30 p.m. on April 25. They added that they witnessed Azwar being beaten at 2 a.m. the following day. All three suspects said that Azwar went to the bathroom at around 12 p.m. that day, when he suddenly fell unconscious. He was first taken to the clinic at the Jakarta Police headquarters in South Jakarta, but was refused admittance. Then he was taken to the Bhayangkara National Police Hospital in Kramat Jati, East Jakarta. He was declared dead on arrival.
'Zainal and Syahrial said that their faces were bruised all over, which was why all the suspects wore masks during a press conference [at the police headquarters] on April 26,' Patra said.
However, after listening to the suspects' defense statements and their request to drop the case due to the alleged torture by police officers, the panel of judges said on Wednesday that the trials would continue next week.
In the three-page indictment, the five defendants stand accused of having sexually abused the victim twice, once in January and once in February, in a restroom on campus. The evidence consists of a narrative account of events and three medical examination results that describe the six-year-old victim as having tested positive for proctitis, an inflammation of the anus and lining of the rectum; and the herpes simplex type-2 strand of genital herpes.
Patra said that he and the other lawyers discovered that the suspects were tested for herpes at the Bio Medika clinic in South Jakarta during detention, but that the results were not included in the indictment. 'It was probably not included because they tested negative for any sexually transmitted disease,' he said.
Natalius Pigai, the Komnas HAM commissioner who received the report, said that a special team would be deployed to investigate the claims. 'We have also received reports from all the parties involved in the case, including the school. There are several inconsistencies in the reports we have received,' he said.
The commission would request that Azwar's body be autopsied in order to determine whether or not he had truly committed suicide, he added.
Separately, Jakarta Police chief detective Sr. Comr. Heru Pranoto told the Post that the defendants had every right to claim that policemen had beaten them into confessing.
However, he warned that if the trial proved that the defendants were guilty, they could be charged with perjury for making false statements in court. (fss)
