I am not trying to convince PG - his mind is made up.
However, I thought I'd summarise with 5 reasons why I am convinced the verdict is wrong. I will later describe the evidence that was cited by the judge in her reasons for the verdict.
I think this is important, because the idea of fellow international school teachers not throwing whatever support they can behind these innocent teachers makes my stomach churn.
None of what follows is conjecture - it was all presented in the court. Anything that I claim that the prosecution used as evidence was read out by the judge when she gave her verdict.
As you may know, the judge refused to let any of the media, human rights representatives and consular officials enter the court room. She also gagged anyone from commenting publicly on the case. So the only way we can know what evidence she heard is from what she read out at the end of the case (she took about 8 hours, counting breaks) or what the defence at the end of the case presented to the media.
Basically, from her speech/presentation, the world got to hear the complete prosecution case against the 2 men. There is nothing that happened in the court that was used to convict the 2 men that we do not know - the judge told us in her closing presentation.
Here, first, are my 5 reasons why I think the verdict was wrong.
1. The location of the alleged assaults was in a public space. At first, the police claimed publicly that the assaults took place in Bantleman's office and the faculty lounge. It then emerged that these spaces had glass walls and were in some of the busiest sections of the elementary school. According to the police, the assaults took place during the school day.
Later, the police tried to speak of there being a ‘secret room'; however, they were seen on CCTV camera being shown by one of the victims where the assault took place. Watch this clip –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaDvrPsqs-s
It would be impossible to commit multiple assaults in such a visible, high traffic, location during the school day.
Unless you want to believe that the police and the mother of one of the children mis-spoke and meant to say they took place in the so far undiscovered secret room.
In her summing up, the judge referred to a secret room, an office and a toilet (in the case of Tiong).
For the record, not one person who works in the space shown in the video were interviewed by the police. Testimony of those who work in that space during the trial was rejected by the court.
2. The police said the accused produced a ‘magic stone’ from the air and inserted it into the child so that the child would not feel pain when raped. This stone was never produced. Nor was any evidence given of any pills or tablets in existence that would anesthetize a child from the top of the legs to the stomach.
The judge accepted the existence of the magic stone as part of the teachers' modus operandi, stating that the stone was used exactly as I described - to anesthetize the victims. In this way, the men could rape the boys without the children making any noise.
3. The only medical examinations that found signs of abuse were at the Police Hospital in Jakarta. The child whose mother initiated the case was examined in 2 other facilities in Jakarta, as well as one in Singapore.
These places found no evidence of rape. Consider the physical damage that multiple rapes would do to 5-6 yr old boys.
The court rejected the medical evidence of all the hospitals bar the police hospital.
The court also rejected medical testimony that such rapes (one child was found by the court to have been raped by 5 cleaners and the 2 teachers over a period months) would cause extreme physical damage and possibly cause the death of a child - they would certainly prevent the child from returning to the classroom without showing any physical/emotional distress.
The judge did not explain why she rejected the other testimony, except to say that the Singaporean evidence was not permissible for use in an Indonesian court - this was despite the fact that it was certified by the High Court in Singapore and used in a defamation suit by the teachers against one of the mothers that the teachers won.
4. The boys attended school during and after the times of the alleged rapes (the police never specified an exact date for the rapes; rather, they said the rapes occurred over a period of many months). At no time during those months did the children show any physical or emotional distress or fear about being at school. They were captured on film and in images being happy and playful at school.
Testimony was given by the boys' teachers, as well as parents of their classmates, attesting to this. All of this evidence was ignored by the court. The judge offered no explanation for ignoring this evidence in her explanation to the court for the guilty verdict.
5. Peer reviewed expert psychologists (I think one was from Oxford University) were called by the school to talk about the best practice methods necessary to interview children about suspected sex abuse. A lot of these methods arose after the fiasco in the USA of the McMartin Trials in the 1980s when "suggestive questioning" by well-meaning counselors and psychologists led to children claiming they had been raped when in fact the rapes did not occur. The McMartin case has terrible parallels with the JIS case, right down to the existence of secret rooms.
This expert testimony was ignored by the court - when they were giving evidence, the judges questioned their expertise. When announcing her verdict, the judge did not explain why she did not accept their opinions.
However, she did accept the evidence from the local psychologists – including one who claimed that the fact that Bantleman only had sex with his wife once a week was a possible explanation for sodomising little boys. His ‘rationale’ was that normal men needed to have sex 2-3 times a week, and he would be seeking a ‘release’. The judge stated this when announcing her verdict.
To Mr DepTrai, welcome to the ISR Forum - I would suggest it is highly unlikely that the Canadian authorities will pursue Bantleman. Both the US and British embassies have publicly criticised the verdict. Although the Canadians have been silent, I would think that their prosecutors would only proceed if they had confidence in the evidence used to convict Bantleman.
This was the evidence. There is nothing else:
1. Three 5-6 yr old boys said they were assaulted. This is certainly the most credible evidence produced by the prosecution. However, the major problem with this evidence is that (1) the stories changed over time, including in the court room and in published witness statements (2) the methods used to interview the children did not follow the procedures currently used in the USA or Canada (or any nation that uses contemporary methods to interview suspected victims of child abuse).
In most jurisdictions, the testimony of children that young can not be used as evidence without corroborating evidence.
2. One piece of corroborating evidence was the medical testimony from the police hospital. As I outlined earlier, the mother who initiated the case against the teachers went first to two doctors in Jakarta who did not find evidence of rape. She then went to Singapore and got the same response. She got the diagnosis she was looking for at the police hospital (who also subsequently found the other 2 victims were raped. Surprise surprise.).
3. In Bantleman's office, the police found some rope and an orange sash. They claimed the rope and the sash were used to tie the victims up. This was the only physical evidence used against the 2 men.
The police did take a blender from Bantleman's office and a picture taken of the court room did show the blender being in the evidence box (with the sash and rope).
Here is an extract from the Sydney Morning Herald which might explain why the blender was presented in the court room. The journalist directly quotes from the witness statements in this extract (I do not know whether these exact words were used in court).
"One of the boys alleges that school principal, (I am removing the name) mixed a blue-coloured drink to drug the children, then videotaped sex attacks. XXXX has been questioned a number of times by police but has never been recategorised as a "suspect," remaining a "witness" only. One boy said in his statement that, when he refused to drink the blue drink, "the boss" (referring to Mr Bantleman), snapped his fingers and a magic stone appeared in his hand.
"The boss would get a magic stone that the boss would take from the sky," the boy said, according to the report of the witness statement. The stone would be inserted into the boy to anaesthetise him before he was raped."
Source:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/bizarre-det ... 0hww3.html
Bantleman's defence was that he used the blender to make blueberry smoothies. However, the judge did not bring the blender up when she announced her verdict, preferring the explanation that the stone was used simply as a suppository being inserted into the childrens' buttocks.
It has been suggested that the judge ignored the blender because the prosecution did not want to pursue the Principal, who was a US citizen and female.
4. Bantleman only had sex with his wife once a week. The Indonesian psychologist saw this as a reason why he would rape little boys. This was used as evidence to prove Bantleman's guilt.
5. Is the 'magic stone' evidence? It was mentioned 4 times by the judge when she announced her verdict. Of course, an example of such a stone was never produced in the court as evidence.
Mr DepTrai - I suspect that when Bantleman returns to Canada (hopefully soon), he will be fine. Any prosecutor who tried to convict him on that evidence would not only be laughed out of court, but would also probably lose their job.
I was bemused to read PG's statement that the 2 men "were convicted by a seated jurist in a internationally recognised court of competent jurisdiction, not just "someone"?"
In reality, Indonesia is 'internationally recognised' for having an incompetent and corrupt judicial system. It took me a couple of minutes to find this. You can also find out more at
https://www.transparency.org/
http://www.gallup.com/poll/157073/corru ... nesia.aspx
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/world ... d=all&_r=0
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/joko-wido ... mdawv.html
I did laugh out loud when I saw the reply to @pds86 post.
Here is the poem, written by Pastor Martin Niemöller about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis' rise to power.
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
This did become a rather long post and probably far too verbose for you English teachers out there - sorry about that.
Well done for getting to the end of it:)