Jakarta – For more than five years, Herry Wirawan, the principal of a girls-only Islamic boarding school in Bandung, West Java, has allegedly raped students in his charge. Of the 12 known victims, nine have given birth as a result of the assaults, and two others are in the advanced stages of pregnancy. As Herry's court trial proceeds, no doubt we will hear more on the extent of his horrific crime, including the likelihood of more victims.

That he got away with so many rapes for so long raises the question, which must also be in the minds of the young victims as they went through the ordeal: where were we when they needed us most? Where were the state, the police and the government, that should have come to their protection? Where were the parents, siblings, families, neighbors and the community that should have looked after them?

These girls must have felt completely abandoned by the state and society.

Sex predators will always be around waiting for the opportunity to strike. And we gave Herry ample space and time to commit his crime. As a nation and society, we have laws to stop this heinous crime and the police to enforce them. We have families and communities to guard the girls. But this system is flawed, and the likes of Herry have exploited it. We know that many more rape cases have gone unreported.

The chorus of angry condemnation that has ensued the public disclosure of Herry's evil deeds this past week, including the demands for the court to mete the harshest punishments, from castration, long incarceration or even death, does not conceal our failure to protect the girls, and to protect the many other rape victims, for that matter.

Our nation's failure to come up with a law against sexual violence, a demand from women activists these last nine years, speaks volumes of the prevailing rape culture rooted in our patriarchal society.

The draft bill has lingered in the House of Representatives since 2016, around the same time Herry began assaulting the girls in his school. Our elected representatives continue to stall the legislation and have even watered-down the draft bill, so that if and when the law is enacted, it will probably not be effective to stop the crime.

Many rape victims do not report to the police not only for fear of having to relive the traumatic experience, there have been cases when the victims ended up as the party to blame. Case in point is the number of college students who have been expelled for reporting their lecturers or fellow students who had assaulted them.

Rather than waiting for the bill to become law, Education, Culture, Research and Technology Minister Nadiem Makarim has come up with a regulation to prevent sexual violence on campuses. Even then, he faced massive opposition from religious conservatives. Given the incidents in schools, Nadiem should have extended the regulation to all schools all the way down to kindergarten.

We should stop whitewashing our own complicity and our inaction as a nation in preventing sexual violence from spreading and growing in frequency. We are as much to blame as the sex predators for not being there when the girls needed us to protect and care for them.

Source: https://www.thejakartapost.com/opinion/2021/12/14/where-were-you-rape-victims-ask.htm