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espite having been convicted of the sexual abuse of children, two teachers and five cleaners who worked at the Jakarta Intercultural School (JIS) have continued to receive support from the international school'€™s community, which insists the seven are innocent.

JIS head Tim Carr said during a press conference recently that the school was still struggling to understand how a case that was built on a '€œfalse accusation'€ and '€œnot supported by any credible evidence'€ could lead to a guilty verdict.

'€œFerdinant and Neil are men of honor. We will always continue to be there for them and look forward to the day when they are actually free,'€ Tim told reporters on Wednesday.

According to the principal, the case has unsettled the school'€™s teachers, who are unsure if they will be able to continue their work.

Last week, the South Jakarta District Court sentenced Canadian Neil Bantleman and Indonesian Ferdinant Tjiong to 10 years'€™ imprisonment for sexually abusing three kindergarten pupils at the school between January 2013 and March 2014.

In December 2014, five outsourced cleaners were convicted of sexually abusing one of the three boys whose parents had reported the teachers to the police. The five were sentenced to seven and eight years'€™ imprisonment; another cleaner died in custody.

All the accused maintain their innocence. The cleaners recently filed a cassation to the Supreme Court after the Jakarta High Court turned down their appeal, while the teachers are still preparing their appeal dossiers.

In a meeting on Wednesday, Ayu Rachmat, who has two children in the JIS kindergarten and early education section, revealed that parents and staffers were collecting money to support the families of the six cleaners.

'€œThe cleaners are not wealthy and we believe that their families need support now more than ever,'€ Ayu told The Jakarta Post, adding that every month up to Rp 2 million (US$155) was given to each of the six families.

She emphasized that she and other parents believed that the cases were fabricated, otherwise '€œwe would take our children away from this school as soon as possible'€.

Maura Soeparjadi Kwik, whose children attend the JIS elementary school, recalled the day when the case emerged, triggering panic among parents.

She added that the school principal had sent an email to all parents in April 2014 explaining that something had happened to a child, without revealing the child'€™s name or nationality.

'€œWord circulated very quickly and the parents were very scared for their children, but we didn'€™t know any details,'€ she said.

Maura added that as soon as the news broke, TP, the mother of the first victim, gathered almost 200 JIS parents to reveal her story.

'€œThe more we learn about this case, the surer we are that it did not happen. There are too many irregularities,'€ she went on.

On April 2, the presiding judge at the teachers'€™ trial, Nuraslam Bustaman, said during the reading of the verdict that the facts revealed in court had convinced her that Bantleman and Ferdinant had repeatedly abused the three boys for a period of 15 months.

When passing judgment on Bantleman, the judge said: '€œConsidering all evidence presented and every fact revealed before the court, we conclude that the defendant knowingly committed violence, or threats of violence, to sexually abuse a child,'€ Nuraslam said.

The pair'€™s lawyers have insisted that the criminal case is closely related to a civil lawsuit filed at the South Jakarta District Court by TP, who is demanding JIS pay compensation of $125 million.