A teacher at an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia has been sentenced to life in prison for raping 13 female students.
This came to light when the family of a female student reported to police last year that “Harry Viravan” had attacked their teenage daughter.
The religious teacher attacked and raped eleven to sixteen-year-old students over a five-year period.
During this time, eight of her victims gave birth to nine babies. Among her victims, one student gave birth twice.
The case shocked public opinion and angered many people in Indonesia.
The defendant’s request to ‘castrate’ the case was rejected
The prosecutor had requested a death sentence for the teacher. But on Tuesday, a panel of Bandung District Court judges sentenced the 36-year-old to life in prison.
In addition, the jury in its final decision rejected the prosecutor’s request to “castrate” the religious teacher.
Nearly five million children in the country attend more than 20,000 religious boarding schools.
The victims will receive up to $ 6,000 in compensation from the Indonesian government. Prosecutors, however, demanded $ 21,000 in compensation for the victims.
According to local media, prosecutors told the court that Viravan had attracted a poor man to his school by providing scholarships and other incentives to young people.
According to court documents, the victim girls were very vulnerable because they were away from their families and had regular contact with their parents. Their cell phones were also confiscated, and they were only allowed to return home once a year.
The case has once again raised the issue of sexual violence against women in Indonesia, and there have been renewed calls for a bill to eradicate sexual violence against women.
Women’s rights activists have been lobbying for the bill for nearly a decade, but Conservative lawmakers have consistently delayed it.
Religious movements and Islamic groups opposed to the bill argued that the bill, which aims to define harassment, rape and other forms of sexual offenses and violence, could promote “unrestrainedness”; This issue was strongly rejected by the opposition.