An Indonesian court yesterday sentenced a teacher to life in prison for the rape of 13 students, in a case that has drawn national attention to sexual abuse in some of the nation’s religious boarding schools.
Bandung District Court in West Java found Herry Wirawan guilty of raping 13 female students, all minors, and impregnating at least eight of them.
During the trial, it was revealed that he had raped the children — many from poor families attending the school on scholarships — over five years.
Photo: AFP
The pattern of abuse came to light when the family of a female student last year reported Wirawan to the police for raping and impregnating their teenage daughter.
The revelations have sparked national outrage, with a senior government official saying Indonesian President Joko Widodo has paid special attention to the case.
Prosecutors had asked for chemical castration and the death penalty for the accused.
Wirawan, 36, arrived in court in handcuffs and kept his head down as Judge Yohannes Purnomo Suryo Adi sentenced him to life in prison.
He had asked the judge for leniency to allow him to raise his children.
The court also said restitution for the victims would be paid by the government.
Indonesian National Child Protection Commission Chairman Susanto said that yesterday’s verdict meant that “justice for the victims has been served.”
More than 25,000 Islamic boarding schools — known as pesantren — are dotted across Indonesia, with nearly 5 million students living and studying in the dorms.
Teaching is often regimented — students attend regular classes during the day, and continue Koranic studies and Islamic teachings into the evening.
The Bandung rape case has shone a spotlight on the problem of sexual abuse in some of the schools, with 14 out of the 18 cases reported to the National Child Protection Commission last year taking place in pesantren.
Last year, two teachers at a boarding school in South Sumatra were arrested for sexually abusing 26 male students over the course of a year.
In 2020, a boarding school leader in East Java was sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexually assaulting 15 female students.
Widodo last month called on parliament to approve a bill on the “elimination of sexual violence,” which seeks to combat sex crimes and provide justice to victims, including in cases of marital rape.
The bill was drafted in 2016, but has run into delays, with Islamic groups complaining it promoted promiscuity, and conservative lawmakers calling for it to criminalize extramarital sex and LGBT relationships.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver