Heartbreaking outcome for Neil - and for the teacher assistant, Ferdi, as well as the cleaners who were imprisoned in December (and the cleaner who 'committed suicide' in prison).
Have not spent much time on this forum lately, but interesting to see Psyguy is still here stirring the pot.
Please consider that in this case, many of the posters are quite close to the case and suggesting there may be merit in the prosecution's case is incredibly hurtful.
Any perusal of the evidence, as well as the history of corruption in Indonesia, as well as the astonishingly blunt comments of the US and UK Ambassadors, should not leave any reasonable person in any doubt as to what is going on here. To suggest otherwise strikes me as just being cruel.
No need to read on if u are not interested, but this article was published in an Indonesian publication dedicated to reform of their judicial system. The language is a bit clunky as it has been translated; however, it does give some insight into the impossible position JIS and their teachers were placed in. Of course, just googling this case and reading some of the international coverage of the verdict (or go online and read The Australian or the Sydney Morning Herald) should hopefully support what I said in the previous paragraph. Anyway, here is the article from
http://www.reformasi.info/
In the alleged child sex abuse case against educators from the Jakarta InterculturalSchool (Jis), a key expet defense witness was unable to testify publicly because the civil-case plaintiff failed to appear. Lawyers expressed concern that the plaintiff, a mother suing Jis for Rp1.5 trillion, is manipulating the legal system.
In the criminal case, Head Judge Nur Aslam Bustaman made an extraordinary decision last December to impose a gag order, prohibiting litigants from discussing any details of the trial in public. However, in the civil case, handled by South Jakarta District Court Head Haswandi, no gag order can apply. Therefore, the session scheduled for 26 March had provided an opportunity for the defense to finally publicize the testimony of an expert witness, Kevin Baird, a microbiologist from Oxford. However, the plaintiff, with no explanation, failed to appear – and therefore Haswandi postponed proceedings, denying Baird an opportunity to speak.
Furthermore, Haswandi imposed an unusual two-week postponement of the trial proceedings, rather than a customary one-week period. The next court date is 7 April. Meanwhile, in the criminal trial underway separately, a final verdict is due on 2 April.
-: It is highly suspicious that a plaintiff, who is seeking Rp1.5 trillion, would fail to appear for a civil-court trial date without providing any explanation. Under ordinary circumstances, such an unexplained failure might jeopardize the plaintiff’s prospects for winning the sought-after award. Ample reason exists to suspect that the plaintiff’s maneuver is a deliberate ploy to prevent Baird’s testimony from receiving media coverage. Also, the plaintiff’s readiness to miss a court date, with no explanation, suggests that the plaintiff is confident of retaining the judge’s favor regardless of their conduct.
Meanwhile, the judge’s unusual decision to schedule a long two-week delay – until after the criminal case verdict date – sends an ominous signal. The judge, Haswandi, has received criticism in the past for issuing exceedingly light sentences for corruption convicts. Haswandi was also a member of the three-judge panel that acquitted the National Intelligence Agency Deputy Maj Gen (ret) Muchdi Purwopranjono, who had been accused of masterminding the assassination of the human rights activist Munir.
The erratic conduct of the criminal and civil cases in the South Jakarta court suggests that the Jis educators, Neil Bantleman and Ferdinant Tjiong, will receive prison sentences when judges read the criminal verdict next week. The case patently lacks admissible evidence: there is no physical evidence or adult eyewitnesses, and the claims made by a six-year-old child should be inadmissible in court (although judges appear to be neglecting this). Meanwhile, there is reason to suspect that collusion exists to besmirch, extort or close Jis.
The latest maneuvering in the case also hints that judges are, as Reformasi Weekly has maintained, sensitive to media reports in the ‘court of public opinion’. If the judges were unconcerned about media coverage, they presumably would not have impaired Baird’s public testimony by imposing the unusually long delay for the next court date.
A guilty verdict against the Jis educators will underscore the risks that face operators in Indonesia. Unpredictable and predatory legal-system outcomes significantly elevate potential hazards for businesses. In turn, by elevating the country risk premium that affects decision-making in the financial sector, these conditions tend to inflate interest rates and, consequently, hike operating costs for all economic actors (foreign and domestic, corporate
and consumer).
For the Widodo administration, the situation underscores the difficulty of improving Indonesia’s international image and boosting investor confidence, when meaningful efforts towards institutional reform are still lacking.
For the Jis educators, if the court produces guilty verdicts, appeals to the Jakarta High Court will be possible – but the process would be lengthy and the defendants would remain in prison in the meantime. An adverse ruling from the High Court would be subject to further appeal to the Supreme Court. In the previous decade, Supreme Court verdicts were often more reliable than those from lower courts, but indications from certain controversial cases in recent years suggest that this has been changing.
BOTTOM LINE: A dubious move to prevent public defense testimony in the Jis case signals the likelihood of guilty sentences for two educators, despite a lack of any evidence.