T

he survivor of an alleged sexual assault at a respected university finds herself on a long journey battling victim-blaming in a paternalistic society.

In the end, she says she lost some battles but is triumphing in the war.

“I think I lost in my case. My demand for [the alleged perpetrator] to be dismissed from the university was not met, but I’m still in the fight for the bigger goal and I still have high spirits. I’m not giving up. I’m not put out,” Agni said on Wednesday.

Agni, not her real name, is a student of Gadjah Mada University (UGM), one of the country’s oldest and largest state universities. She alleges that in late June 2017, she was sexually assaulted by a fellow student during a community development program in Maluku province. The following day she reported her case to the supervisor of the program. Since then, she has received a lot of support but also a lot of blame.

Her case became public in November last year when Balairung Press, a UGM student news website, published her story and described how she had reported the case to the university and was blamed for the incident. The article went viral and inspired an online petition and a number of rallies against abuse on campuses, not only at UGM but also in other institutions like the University of Indonesia (UI).

On Monday, UGM’s rectorate, Agni — accompanied by her legal team — and the alleged perpetrator identified only as HS, settled the case out of court. HS apologized to Agni even though he did not specify what he was apologizing for.

“This was a long battle, but at least, the news [published by Balairung] has encouraged an improvement in policy. More people are aware; more people are shaken and shocked. So I signed the agreement, settled the case, and it’s OK that UGM did not punish [the alleged perpetrator] and did not say clearly that what happened was sexual assault,” Agni said.

“Agni has fought for justice with courage and strength for one and a half years,” Anastasia Suki Ratnasari, one of her lawyers, said.

Agni said the choice she had made to settle the case, even without a recognition of sexual assault from UGM, was to “minimize risk” and avoid the worst. In their settlement, Agni, HS and UGM agreed to end the police investigation, although UGM did not specify how they would do that.

From the beginning, Agni did not want to involve the police because she believed they would not give her justice. However, the Maluku Police opened an investigation on their own and grilled Agni for 12 hours without a lawyer present. Later, an official with the UGM’s rectorate, Arif Nurcahyo, filed a report to the Yogyakarta Police on Agni’s case, against her wishes, and the Yogyakarta Police questioned her for four hours.

Many of the questions touched on sensitive issues and were asked discourteously, said Agni.

“[The questions] affected my psychological condition the next day,” she said on Friday.

Suharti, the director of the Rifka Annisa women’s crisis center, said on Wednesday that there were several indications the police wanted to subject Agni and Balairung journalists to criminal charges.

Yogi Zul Fadhli, the lawyer of one of the journalists, Thovan Sugandi, said the threat was real. The Yogyakarta Police questioned Thovan and Balairung reporter Citra Maudy and told the press that the Balairung article was fiction.

The police, however, have no plans to stop the investigation. The director of general crime for the Yogyakarta Police, Sr. Comr. Hadi Utama, said that despite the settlement signed by UGM, Agni and HS, the police would continue with the case. So far, he said, the police had concluded that the rape had not happened.

On Jan. 18, Agni said she felt that UGM, especially the rectorate office, was not on her side.

Following Balairung’s report, the university formed an ethics committee that later concluded the incident did not constitute sexual harassment, only indecent conduct, said Agni’s lawyer, Suki.

Four of the seven committee members refused to concede Agni had been sexually harassed, she added.

Rifka Annisa director Suharti said the ethics committee’s conclusions hurt justice. She said UGM had promised to settle the case with gender equality in mind.

However, committee member Sri Wiyanti Eddyono from UGM’s Law School, later came out with a dissenting opinion, writing in a commentary that she believed Agni. This was an “individual opinion”, the letter read, and as a criminal law expert, she could not agree with the ethics committee.

In her opinion piece, she quoted several academic research papers as sources and revealed that HS had admitted to “indecent conduct” without Agni’s consent. She further wrote that HS had claimed to have interpreted Agni’s silence as consent.

Agni previously told the committee that she had frozen out of fear when the incident occurred.

According to Sri Wiyanti, the conflicting perceptions from HS and Agni were the result of a gender stereotype born out of a patriarchal culture. “The result of this culture is a man’s privilege to think that his perception is fact,” she said, quoting research from 2016.

Agni said even though she agreed to settle the matter, she believed at the end of the day the public would hold UGM accountable for the way it handled her case.