T

eacher Ferdinant Tjiong was asleep with his wife and two children when state prosecutors came pounding on a window near their bed at 2 a.m. on Thursday. It was a predawn arrest of a teacher who had been found guilty without evidence, before being acquitted and then, in a cassation case at the Supreme Court, convicted again.

Tjiong and his Jakarta Intercultural School (JIS) colleague Neil Bantleman, a dual citizen of Canada and the UK, were sentenced Wednesday to 11 years'€™ imprisonment each for abusing three kindergarten students at the prestigious South Jakarta school.

There is no need to question the integrity of the judges, especially justice Artidjo Alkostar who is known for having heightened the prison terms of many corrupt officials, but like it or not the guilty verdict of the two JIS teachers has raised concerns about justice and legal certainty in the country.

If left unaddressed, the concerns, which have been clearly expressed in statements of disappointment at the verdict, will lead to skepticism and eventually distrust.

What matters in the case against Ferdinant and Bantleman is that the police lacked solid evidence, but the South Jakarta District Court, after a string of hearings held entirely behind closed doors because the case concerned children, convicted the defendants anyway in April last year when public pressure mounted for their imprisonment.

Later in August, the Jakarta State Administrative High Court overturned the lower court'€™s verdict, acquitting the two teachers on the grounds that the South Jakarta District Court had failed to study the case thoroughly. The high court'€™s decision seemed to confirm flaws in the due process of law, such as the lower court'€™s failure to take into consideration medical records from a number of Jakarta and Singaporean hospitals that discovered no indications of sexual abuse. It found the two teachers guilty based on the statements of the three students as victims.

Indeed, the police and state prosecutors in separate trials for the two teachers and four cleaners, who were eventually also convicted, failed to present forensics examination reports that confirmed the three boys were really assaulted.

The complexity of the sex assault case was felt when the mother of one of the victims filed a civil lawsuit against JIS, cleaning services company PT ISS Indonesia and the Culture and Education Ministry, demanding US$125 million in damages, but the court dismissed the legal move on technicalities.

The verdict came less than a month after the Singapore High Court awarded material compensation to JIS and the two teachers in a defamation case against another mother in the case. The court ordered the mother to pay S$130,000 in damages to Bantleman and Ferdinant and S$100,000 to JIS and its principal.

Nevertheless, the Supreme Court'€™s verdict must be respected, but the Indonesian justice system allows both Ferdinant and Bantleman to keep fighting for justice, especially because of the lingering questions about evidence. The two look certain to file a case review, which is necessary not only to prove their innocence, but also to ensure that justice is served.