Apr 5: An Indonesian court on Monday sentenced a teacher to death for raping 13 girls at an Islamic school, upholding the prosecutor’s plea for death penalty.
The case of Herry Wirawan has stunned Indonesia and has drawn attention to the need to protect children from sexual violence in religious boarding schools.
Wirawan was initially sentenced to life in prison. However, the prosecutor who had requested the death penalty filed an appeal after Wirawan was sentenced to life in prison by court in Bandung in February.
The judge in a statement on Monday said that the defendant will now be punished with the death penalty. Herry’s lawyer, Ira Mambo, declined to comment on whether an appeal would be filed, citing the need to see the full court judgement.
During the February trial, it was revealed that Herry sexually abused 13 girls between the years 2016 and 2021, his victims were between the ages of 12 to 16 and eight of them fell pregnant following the rape.
The uncle of one of Herry’s victims, Hidmat Dijaya said that “we initially wanted punishments of life in prison and chemical castration so that he would feel the pain from his crime”, but that they feel “the death sentence represents justice.”
The rape case in Bandung has also brought attention to the issue of sexual abuse in Indonesian schools, with 14 of the 18 incidents reported to the Child Protection Commission last year occurring in Islamic boarding schools.
Officials in Indonesia, including the country’s child protection minister, have backed calls for the death sentence, despite the fact that the country’s human rights commission thinks the declared death penalty is not appropriate.
