For child rights activist Arist Merdeka Sirait, there is nothing that enrages him more than police investigators asking a teenage sexual assault victims questions like, “How did you feel when they were raping you?” or “How did they do it?”

As a member of the independent National Commission on Child Protection (Komnas PA), Arist often accompanies teenage victims of violence while they are being questioned by the mostly male officers manning the Women and Children Protection (PPA) desk in local police offices. He knows that such aggressive questions psychologically hurt the victims even more.

“These questions make me angry. How could they ask a little girl how she was feeling being raped? What a terrible question! They should dig for more information to prosecute the perpetrators instead of exacerbating her trauma,” Arist told The Jakarta Post.

“These children were already traumatized by the incident and even more so when they told their stories to their parents. Then the police worsen their ordeal by asking those crazy questions. They are children who should receive appropriate treatments.”

The latest high-profile case that the commission co-handled was last year’s gang rape of two junior high school students in Pematang Siantar, North Sumatra. It sparked a nationwide outcry after the girls died while their case was under investigation and the alleged perpetrators were still on the loose. The commission alleged that the prolonged rigorous police questioning had made their depression worse.

Komnas PA points out that PPA officers’ most common mistake is that they treat child victims the way they treat adults. Teenage suspects are detained in the same cell as adult ones. This indiscriminate approach conflicts with the 2002 law on child protection and international conventions that Indonesia has ratified.

Bambang Rukminto from the Institute for Security and Strategic Studies (ISSES) underlines the need for PPA officers to have a good grasp of women and children issues. “There should be awareness among them of the importance of PPA and this needs a change in their mindsets.”

A lesson police, especially officers in charge of PPA, must learn from is the apparent mishandling of a case that resulted in a guilty verdict in 2013 for Yusman Telaumbanua for murdering three people in 2012. The Gunung Sitoli district court in North Sumatra subsequently sentenced Yusman to death.

The questionable sentence came to light after the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) discovered that Yusman was only 16 years old when he committed the crime. Both national and international justice systems rule that the maximum penalty for a minor is 10 years’ imprisonment, not death.