R

enowned child psychologist Seto Mulyadi testified at the South Jakarta District Court on Monday at the trial of five outsourced cleaners who are accused of abusing a kindergarten student at the Jakarta International School (JIS).

Seto, who is also the head of the advisory board of the National Commission on Child Protection (Komnas PA), explained that he attended the closed-door session as a material witness, not as an expert witness, because he had only conducted three therapy sessions with the 6-year-old boy in April before the task was taken over by another psychologist because of Seto'€™s busy schedule.

'€œI told the judges that the child was sexually abused. There were clear signs from his behavior,'€ he said.

Seto said he firmly believed the child was traumatized by sexual abuse, but he acknowledged he had not discovered who exactly had abused him during the therapy sessions. Seto explained that he would have needed to have met with the boy at least 15 times before uncovering the perpetrators.

'€œI was also asked by the defendants'€™ lawyers whether a traumatized child could honestly point out his abusers from photos. I told them that I could not measure the child'€™s sincerity unless I was there at the time to observe him,'€ Seto said.

In a previous session, JIS operations risk manager David told the judges that he saw the victim pointing to the images of several different men when David showed him the pictures of all the cleaners on campus.

The five defendants '€” Afrischa Setyani, Virgiawan Amin, Zainal Abidin, Syahrial and Agun Iskandar, who were all employed by PT Integrated Service Solutions (ISS) to work at JIS '€” stand accused of having sexually abused the victim twice in a restroom at JIS, once in January and once in February.

Separately, Virgiawan and Agun'€™s lawyer, Patra M. Zen, told reporters that Seto'€™s testimony had strengthened their defense.

'€œI have great respect for Seto'€™s work and honesty. During the trial, he told the judges he could not explain who or what was the cause of the trauma that the victim was experiencing because of their limited meetings,'€ Patra said.

Seto also explained that a child abused at school would most likely try to avoid returning there, Patra said.

Afrischa'€™s lawyer, Faizal Roni, said that Agus Widodo from PT ISS'€™ legal and external affairs department told the judges in court that he was asked by the Jakarta Police to ask the defendants whether they had done the crime. Agus said the defendants confessed when he asked them, but he emphasized that two policemen were present at the time. (fss)