Indonesia charges 13 in day care abuse scandal
Indonesian police have arrested 13 people after shocking images of alleged abuse against small children at a day care center went viral, sparking outrage across the nation, officials said on Monday.
Police last Friday raided Little Aresha, a day care center in Yogyakarta on Java island, following a report from a former employee.
CCTV footage circulating on social media showed children, most under the age of 2, lying on the floor wearing only diapers, their hands and feet bound with rags. The police have confirmed that the footage is authentic.
Police said they also found 20 kids crammed into a room just three by three meters (under 100 square feet).
“So far, 13 people have been named suspects” and arrested in the case, city police chief Eva Guna Pandia told reporters in Yogyakarta on Monday.
Rash of charges
Those in custody include 11 child carers, as well as the headmaster and the head of the foundation that ran the center. They will face a rash of charges including child neglect.
Pandia said the suspects told police they had tied up some of the kids to prevent them from disturbing others.
They claimed the center was understaffed, with not enough personnel to bathe and dress the children, said Yogyakarta detective Riski Adrian.
The day care center accommodated about 100 children, more than half of whom are believed to have been maltreated, according to police.
Parent Noorman Windarto told Agence France-Presse (AFP) he was shocked when he received a phone call from a fellow parent last Friday, urging him to pick up his 2-year-old son.
He later learned from police that the boy, who had been attending the center since he was 3 months old, was among those to have been tied up.
“My heart was shattered,” the 42-year-old civil servant said.
“My wife cried. Most of them (caregivers) were women, and their body language was so tender, so soft-spoken, and appeared to be religious.”
Repeatedly hospitalized
Noorman paid about 1.1 million rupiah (about $64)—half the minimum wage in Yogyakarta— for each of his two children to attend the center, since shuttered.
His oldest child, a daughter now aged 6, stopped going recently.
She sometimes came home with bruises which the day care center said she must have gotten elsewhere, playing, recalled Noorman.
His son had been repeatedly hospitalized with pneumonia, which the father now suspects may have had something to do with him being made to sleep on a cold floor without clothes.
Under Indonesia’s child protection law, the suspects risk up to five years’ imprisonment and a 100 million rupiah fine.
