The Jakarta Globe - Indonesia October 22, 2010
Cleric With Child Bride Should Be Jailed Six Years, Court Told
by Candra Malik
Semarang -- Prosecutors have demanded a court sentence a wealthy Muslim cleric to six years in prison for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl he took as his unofficial wife.
Widiyanto Pujiono Cahyo, 45, also known as Sheikh Puji, married the girl in August 2008.
He has defended his unofficial second marriage by saying the girl had reached puberty.
Prosecutors also asked the court to fine Pujiono, 45, Rp 60 million ($6,700) or face a further six months in prison.
“We recommend six years in prison for him,” prosecutor Suningsih told the court.
“He has been sexually abusive toward women, especially towards this underage girl. As the owner of a religious school, he does not set a good example.”
Lutfiana became the cleric’s second wife after a wedding ceremony that the cleric said was valid under Islamic law but not civil law.
The marriage sparked a public outcry, with critics accusing the cleric of practicing legalized pedophilia.
Pujiono’s lawyer has said the girl refused to annul the marriage because she loved the cleric.
Indonesian law has harsh penalties for pedophilia, but unregistered and therefore unofficial marriages between older men and underage girls are common in rural areas.
Pujiono, the head of the Miftachul Jannah Islamic boarding school in Central Java, was arrested after a report was filed against him by the Anti-Corruption Civil Society Coalition (Kompak).
He claimed in his defense that he had his wife’s approval for the marriage.
Seto Mulyadi, chairman of the Indonesian Child Protection Commission, said he regretted prosecutors had not sought a longer sentence.
“Both articles of the law he is charged under would warrant a 15-year jail term,” he told the Jakarta Globe.
“If prosecutors have demanded less than half of this, how can this be considered to offer any deterrent effect? Instead, it sets a bad precedent.”
He said prosecutors should demand that Pujiono return the girl to her rightful guardians — her parents.
“Based on our discussions with the Indonesian Ulema Council, we do not recommend a divorce,” Seto said.
“We ask for her to be entrusted back to her parents. In time, when she is over 18, she may accept Sheikh Puji and marry him officially.”
The sentence demand comes a year after the Attorney General’s Office said it would challenge the decision of a Central Java court to throw out the child abuse charges in a preliminary ruling.
The Unggaran District Court said prosecutors had failed to detail how and when the defendant had committed the acts for which he had been accused.
Prosecutors challenged the ruling at the Central Java High Court and won. Pujiono lost an appeal in the Supreme Court.
Prosecutor Suningsih told the court that Pujiono should be detained.
“He has been charged with deliberate deception to persuade the child to fulfill his desires and have intercourse with him,” Suningsih said.
“He did not respect the law in Indonesia. The actions of the defendant are acts of abuse against this child because he assumes that money can buy him anything.”
Additional reporting by AFP.
This article was found at:
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/cleric-with-child-bride-should-be-jailed-six-years-court-told/402657
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Islamic school sex abuse under assault in Indonesia
ReplyDeleteReligious school principal sentenced to death for raping 13 schoolgirls as new sexual violence legislation nears final vote
by John McBeth Asia Times April 6, 2022
JAKARTA – An Indonesian court has sentenced a married religious school principal to death for raping 13 schoolgirls in a landmark case that draws an emphatic line under the controversial Sexual Violence Eradication Bill now nearing a final vote in the House of Representatives (DPR).
Originally given a life term, Herry Wirawan was accused of sexually grooming and assaulting the teenagers, nine of whom were impregnated, between 2016 and 2021 at a pesantren, or Islamic boarding school, in Bandung, south of Jakarta.
Under normal circumstances, the 36-year-old father of three would have only been liable for a maximum prison term of 15 years on each charge, although his status as a teacher allowed the district court to extend that to 20 years.
But the Bandung High Court judges were acting on a 2016 amendment to the Child Protection Law which prescribes death for serial child rapists, taking into account that Wirawan assaulted girls aged between 12 and 16 who were under his care.
“What he has done has caused trauma and suffering to the victims and their parents,” said the ruling released on the court’s website. “The defendant has tarnished the reputation of Islamic boarding schools.”
The West Java Prosecutor’s Office appealed the sentence in February, while at the same time saying it would consider demands from the families of the victims that Wirawan be subjected to chemical castration.
The high court also reversed a lower court decision ordering the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection to pay US$23,000 in combined compensation to the victims, instead of seizing Wirawan’s assets and presumably destituting his family.
The Bandung case brought to light the growing problem in the Indonesian education system, with the Child Protection Commission (KPAI) reporting that a fifth of the 51 sexual abuse incidents between 2015 and 2020 happened in boarding schools.
In a later report, KPAI commissioner Retno Listyarti said 14 of the 18 cases of sexual abuse reported in 2021 were in 12 religious schools and involved 126 girls and 71 boys induced into sexual acts with promises of good grades and video games.
“It’s only the tip of the iceberg,” says one activist, deploring the time it has taken to pass the sexual violence bill. “The saddest part is the way religion has been used as a cover. A lot of the children come from poor families who only want their children to get a better education and are afraid to complain.”
Of the 236,000 schools across the country, 84% fall under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education and Culture. The remaining 16% are pesantren, madrasahs and sekolah Islam, all administered by the Ministry of Religious Affairs, where oversight has been lax.
continued below
Activists say one in three Indonesian women suffer from sexual violence, which has gone on unchecked for more than a decade as politicians argued over a myriad of issues in the draft bill, including the definition of what constitutes “consent.”
ReplyDeleteThat lay at the heart of a dispute last year between youthful Education Minister Nadiem Makarim and conservative Muslim groups, who claimed a regulation he issued defining sexual violence as the absence of consent was, in fact, promoting sex among students.
The controversial legislation shifted to a fast track in January when President Joko Widodo made a public appeal to the DPR to get it done. Media reports say it is now expected to pass a plenary session before the House goes into recess on April 15.
The DPR working committee studying the bill has agreed to recognize nine forms of sexual violence: physical and non-physical sexual harassment, sexual torture, forced sterilization, forced contraception, sexual slavery and exploitation and cyber-sex trolling.
The bill guarantees restitution from a proposed government-run Victim Trust Fund, a significant departure from a previous proposal requiring perpetrators to compensate their victims.
It also mandates the establishment of integrated government services, involving police, health workers and psychologists, to handle cases of sexual violence and help victims recover from any trauma they have suffered.
The bill does not address rape and coerced abortions, but the government says they were excluded to avoid overlapping with proposed amendments to the country’s overarching Criminal Code, expected to be passed in July.
Wirawan can still appeal to the Supreme Court, which will have to decide whether his sentence is justified when the death penalty was imposed at a time of public outcry over the gang rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in Sumatra.
The last known executions in Indonesia were in 2016 when four men, including three foreign nationals, were shot by firing squad for narcotics trafficking, a charge that doesn’t meet the international law threshold for “most serious crimes.”
The Death Penalty Project last year estimated there were 355 condemned prisoners on death row. More than 60% of death sentences and half of all executions in the past 20 years have been for drug-related crimes.
But there have been apparently none for rape, apart from those cases where the crime took place in the course of a murder and served as one of the extenuating reasons for judges deciding on capital punishment.
The government has not officially declared a moratorium on the death penalty, which is still used by 55 countries. But as Andreas Harsono, Indonesia director for Human Rights Watch, put it: “I think Jokowi (Widodo) got sick of all the protests.”
https://asiatimes.com/2022/04/islamic-school-sex-abuse-under-assault-in-indonesia/