Police arrested and interrogated six youths, including four senior high school students, over their alleged involvement in a rape case, in which the perpetrators filmed the incident and then distributed the footage electronically, a police officer said Friday
Police arrested and interrogated six youths, including four senior high school students, over their alleged involvement in a rape case, in which the perpetrators filmed the incident and then distributed the footage electronically, a police officer said Friday.
The high schoolers were identified as PEY, FIS, PJ and KJ. Three are students of a senior high school in Selat village, Sukasada district; the other attends Singaraja's Saraswati senior high school. All are aged 16 or 17.
The two other suspects, identified as Gede Ariawan, 20, and Gede Damasa, 18, are unemployed.
Sukasada Police Chief Adj. Comr. Nyoman Sudirga said the police began investigating after receiving a report from the parents of a sixteen year-old girl, LY. The parents accused one of the suspects, PEY, of raping their daughter.
The officers arrested PEY and immediately discovered that a short movie of the alleged rape had been widely distributed via the local youths's cellular phones.
The officers then arrested PEY's accomplices, believed to be responsible for the making and distribution of the film.
During the interrogation, PEY insisted that the sexual encounter was consensual. He claimed he sent text messages to LY asking her to meet him after school. They met at a designated point, PEY said, and then went to Gede Ariawan's house, where the sexual intercourse took place.
The other suspects disclosed that they were in the house when PEY and LY engaged in the sexual activity and were, in fact, eye-witnesses to the activity, as the door of the room the pair were in was not completely closed.
Gede Ariawan confessed that he then took his cellular phone and used its video camera to record the sexual activity.
"I had no ulterior motive (in recording the scene), I just followed my whimsical urge. A few friends asked me to share the movie with them and I willingly transferred the movie to their cellular phones," he said.
Sudarga stressed the police would pursue the case aggressively to determine whether a rape had indeed taken place.
"We will continue questioning the suspects to find the party responsible for the distribution of this explicit movie," he added.
The case has drawn wide public attention as it involves young students from rural areas on the island.
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