A teacher who reportedly raped 13 girls under 16 years old who attended an Islamic school in Bandung, Indonesia, was sentenced to death Monday, according to Reuters.
“(We) hereby punish the defendant with the death penalty,” said a statement posted on the Bandung High Court’s website.
In February, 36-year-old Herry Wirawan was sentenced to life in jail by the court. However, prosecutors filed for an appeal calling for the death penalty. Prosecutors also called for Wirawan to pay the victims the equivalent of $21,000 and to be chemically castrated.
Chemical castration is reversible and can be used a punishment for some sex crimes in countries that include Poland, South Korea and the Czech Republic as well as some U.S. states, said U.S. News and World Report. The Indonesian appeal court denied the prosecutor’s request, according to USA Today.
From 2016 to 2021, Wirawan “sexually groomed the 13 girls, who were between 12 and 16 years old and impregnated eight of his victims, a judge said in February,” Reuters reported. According to the BBC, Wirawan’s victims have given birth to nine children.
While the abuse dates back to 2016, it was not discovered until last May, when a parent of one of Wirawan’s victims discovered their child was pregnant. Prosecutors said Wirawan attracted students to his school by offering scholarships and other incentives to young people in an impoverished area, according to local media quoted by the BBC.
Indonesia is the world's biggest Muslim majority country and it has tens of thousands of Islamic boarding schools. These and other religious schools are often an option for poor families to educate their children.
According to Reuters, the Wirawan case “has shocked Indonesia and shone a spotlight on the need to protect children from sexual violence in the country's religious boarding schools.”
At the Bandung school, located in Indonesia’s West Java province, girls were not in regular contact with their families. Their cell phones were confiscated and they were allowed to go on trips to their home just once a year.
In addition to prosecutors, Indonesian officials such as the country’s child protection minister also backed calls for the death penalty. Indonesia’s human rights commission opposes the death penalty and argued that it was not appropriate in this circumstance.
A spokesperson for the local prosecutor’s office said it would wait to receive the final ruling on the Wirawan case before commenting, said Reuters.
Ira Mambo, Wirawan’s lawyer, declined to comment on whether there would be an appeal and said they would need to see the full ruling.
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