Jakarta. The Indonesian Commission for Child Protection announced
another 6-year-old boy has stepped forward to report that he, too, had suffered
from sexual abuse at the hands of Jakarta International School’s janitorial
staff.
Erlinda, the secretary of the commission known as the KPAI,
claimed on Wednesday that teachers and management of the international school,
commonly referred to as JIS, had known about the incident but made attempts to
prevent details from coming to light.
She said the boy had described his assailants, one of whom is
believed to be one of the two suspects currently in police custody.
“He doesn’t know [their names]. He only referred to them as
‘the big boys,’ or ‘the blue,’” Erlinda said, referring to the janitors’
uniform.
The boy is in the same class as the first victim, whose rape
case triggered a firestorm of legal and media scrutiny on one of Jakarta’s most
expensive private schools.
Erlinda said the incident occurred in February and mirrored
the other case, with the alleged rape occurring in the school bathroom, beyond
the coverage of the school’s closed-circuit television cameras.
The KPAI vowed to protect the boy even though JIS had
provided the services of their psychologist.
“We will take over. The boy will be given therapy to cope with
the traumatizing memories,” she said.
She called on police to collect blood and DNA samples from
all JIS employees.
Meanwhile, Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr Rikwanto said
the Jakarta Police’s Women’s and Children Unit is seeking to charge the school for
negligence that led to the sexual assault of its students.
“It will be developed into [a case of] negligence,” Rikwanto
said, adding that investigators would question teachers, student councilors and
the school’s principal.
“We will summon members of the teaching staff as well as
their principal to collect details on their teaching methodology, and how they
watch over their students, because such an unspeakable act should not have been
allowed to occurred within the school compound,” Rikwanto said.
The police spokesman said the teachers should have been aware
of any behavioral changes in their students as they were the ones the children
were closest to.
Furthermore, he said, it was the teachers’ responsibility to
approach a child if she displayed any signs of fear or discomfort.
“It’s like this: a class consists of 16 students. The teacher
should keep track of each student under his or her care. For instance, when a
student asks for permission to go to the rest room, or when they want to eat,
and so on,” Rikwanto said.
“It’s easy to detect when a child has experienced
extraordinary physical and psychological changes,” he added.
The Education Ministry has ordered the JIS kindergarten
campus closed in the wake of the scandal, citing its lack of an operating permit,
while the immigration department says it will review the work permits of the
foreign staff employed there.
OPINION:
I do believe that, teachers will also be responsible for this
incident. A pre-school pupil is not allowed to go out the classroom without the
supervision of the teacher, that's why they have assistant teacher to accompany
them. Another thing is , the Ministry of Education , Indonesia should implement
a strict supervision and monitoring for all International Schools if they are
accredited or they have license to operate plus strict hiring also for their
staff / teachers , because , based of my experience "some" schools
are hiring the expat without license to teach just to attract enrolees with a
very high salary and those who have license to teach or I would say credible
enough are the one compensating the low salary by considering or looking to the
colour of the skin of the applicant not of because of their experiences and
credibility to teach. This incident is reminder to all of us especially to our
students , parents , teachers & administrators to be vigilant enough and to
be careful in evaluating and screening the applicants... either expats or
locals just to prevent this incident wherein the innocent pupils are the victims
of this evil acts.
JIS in high school and have only good memories of it. The
school certainly missed something critical here if this was able to happen but
I strongly suspect that is a system failure vs any individual failure (if there
was an attempt to cover it up then that’s something different). Remember the
criminal here is the man that raped that poor kid (or kids). I worry that we
have a lynch mob mentality going on here and I wouldn’t trust the Indonesian
police to conduct an investigation objectively at all.
Rifa 'atul Makhmuda
29211006
3EB24
