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Victim clearly traumatized: Grandmother
The grandmother of a kindergarten student who was allegedly sexually abused at the Jakarta International School (JIS) confirmed during her testimony that her grandson was visibly traumatized during her visit to Indonesia
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he grandmother of a kindergarten student who was allegedly sexually abused at the Jakarta International School (JIS) confirmed during her testimony that her grandson was visibly traumatized during her visit to Indonesia.
The grandmother, who was visiting from the Netherlands in March for her son and her grandson's birthday, told The Jakarta Post that she testified on Wednesday at the joint closed-door trial of five outsourced cleaners who stand accused of the crime at the South Jakarta District Court.
'[During the hearing] I talked about my grandson's case and what I witnessed, how he behaved after the incident. I told them that my grandson was clearly traumatized,' she said over the telephone after the hearing concluded.
She added she told the judges that her grandson had told her a detailed account of the alleged incident. However, she declined to describe the events to the Post.
After her testimony, she said, the defendants' lawyers asked her trivial questions in addition to the details of the incident.
'They asked me if I was close to my grandson and my son and I told them I was very close with all my family,' she said.
The case first came to light when the mother of the victim held a press conference on April 14. She said she had found bruises on her son'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 subsequently detained. Another suspect, Azwar, died in April while in custody in the police's women's and children's unit.
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 at JIS. The evidence consists of a narrative account of events and the results of three medical examinations of the victim.
The victim's mother, TP, said that her mother-in-law's testimony had strengthened her optimism about the final outcome of the trials because it was consistent with hers. She added that her mother-in-law had flown in from the Netherlands on Monday to testify during Wednesday's session. She testified in English and was given an interpreter, TP said.
'My mother-in-law told the judges that my son told both of us the exact same story. However, he told her in more detail because he could see that I was very emotional after I first heard his story and didn't want to see me cry even more. My son told my mother-in-law that he was hit and raped by many men in a restroom and that was why he didn't want to pee at school,' she said.
Separately, one of Virgiawan and Agun's lawyers, Saut Irianto Rajagukguk, said that JIS' security operations manager, David, told the panel of judges during his testimony on Wednesday that the victim did not seem traumatized on March 25 when he was told to point out the pictures of the cleaners who allegedly abused him.
'David said that the victim's mother was the one who had asked to see the pictures of all the PT ISS workers at JIS. He presented them 34 pictures,' he said. (fss)
