FREE NEIL AND FERDI
I recently returned from a week of presentations at the
Jakarta Intercultural School (JIS) in Jakarta, Indonesia, where I witnessed a
human rights situation that is, for lack of a better term, dangerously
bizarre. Two elementary educators and
six cleaners (janitors from ISS Indonesia) have been charged in a sexual abuse
case that does not pass the smell test.
I’m not talking about the smell test that tells you something in the
back of the refrigerator has passed its expiration date. I’m talking about dead bodies stacked on a
pile of burning tires.
In March of 2014 a parent came to school charging that her
first grade child had been raped by cleaning staff in a bathroom close to his
classroom. JIS administrators removed
all cleaning staff under the ruse of training, then cooperated with police,
which resulted in the arrest of two identified cleaners. There was sadness and shock among the entire
JIS educational community, and great empathy was exhibited toward the child and
Indonesian mother and Dutch father.
But then Mom went to the press, where she gave graphic
descriptions of the rapes and publicized the name of the child. She said her child was raped thirteen times
in March and had contracted genital herpes.
Another four cleaners were arrested, including one woman. The Mom charged conspiracy, even though two
of the cleaners didn’t work on that part of the campus and just happened to be
there the day the additional four were being (randomly, it turns out) pointed
out.
The cleaners stated they were beaten and threatened by
police without the presence of legal counsel.
One of them supposedly committed suicide by drinking bleach and other
cleaning fluids, but a photograph of his body showed severe bruising and
evidence that his lips had been stapled.
All but one of the rest of the cleaners confessed, none with any legal
counsel. The female, who did have legal counsel held her
ground. All were quickly convicted, none
being allowed to recant their confessions once they reached the relative safety
of the courtroom. Four received eight
year sentences, one (the woman) a seven year sentence, and of course, one is
dead.
The child was examined by four separate doctors, none of
which found any evidence of genital herpes.
Each doctor asked that the mother return with the boy for a second
examination and in each case she did not return. No doctor found anal tears or any evidence
that would have had to accompany
thirteen instances of sodomy in that short time. With her case falling apart, the mother
offered to disappear for a settlement from the school of thirteen and a half
million dollars. When the school
refused, she upped her lawsuit to a hundred twenty five million and implicated
three educators: Neil Bantleman, a Canadian, Ferdi Tjiong, an Indonesian and
Elsa Donahue, an American citizen. Neil
and Ferdi were arrested and remain incarcerated to this day while their trial
proceeds. The American consulate
threatened to bring down the full weight of American diplomacy in the wake of
an American citizen being arrested on such flimsy evidence, and Elsa’s name was
withdrawn.
After that, it gets crazy.
Some highlights of the stunningly, astonishingly,
spectacularly, jaw-droppingly absurd events (this from a writer who knows, at a
molecular level, that adverbs are not his friends) are these:
--One of the sites where the rapes supposedly occurred during the school day is a site called
the aquarium, so-named because it is glass on four sides. Four sides.
That’s all the sides there are.
Any passersby, and they would have been legion, would have witnessed the
goings-on, and their silence would make them complicit.
--Later the testimony changed to a indicate a collection of
“secret rooms” which have since been walled off or filled in or projected into
the universe somehow.
--More of the boy’s testimony - and he is not to be blamed
for what he has been coached to say – indicated that Neil pulled a magic stone
out of thin air, with which he numbed the boy below the waste so there would be
no pain. The stone disappeared as
magically as it appeared.
--In the days following the original accusations, the boy
continued to attend school and exhibited no
evidence of trauma. He played
happily and alluded to nothing untoward and had no problem approaching the
places where the alleged crimes took place.
--The police declared they administered lie detector tests
to Ferdi and Neil that concluded positively that the two were lying, but never
brought the results into court.
--No credible psychologists or therapists interviewed the
child or engaged in play therapy with the child, or brought any evidence to court that a trauma
occurred. (Believe me, the trauma that
occurred all comes from the mother’s willingness to parade her innocent child
in front of the public.)
It goes on and on.
And the cleaners languish in prison and Neil and Ferdi await
their fates. The entire JIS community is
anxious beyond imagination because nothing has been done to exonerate the
cleaners and the fear is that Neil and Ferdi will be found guilty to conceal
the embarrassment – and corruption - behind that original injustice.
This isn’t a story about sex abuse. This is a story about corruption.
March 3 was the last day of testimony (the defense was
allowed three fewer days to present their case than was the prosecution) and
the verdict is to come in on April 2.
I’m calling for OUTRAGE; on the part of the American
educational community, on the part of the Canadian educational community in
particular, and to whatever extent possible on the part of the world
educational community. This could be you.
The teachers and administrators working at American International
Schools all over the world are typically adventurous, dedicated, creative souls
from all parts of the globe. They bypass
- by way of exceeding - the grueling,
anxiety-producing, memory level testing practices that plague American public
schools, to fire the imaginations of their students. And they direct thousands of well prepared
imaginative students into some of the finest English speaking educational
institutions all over the world. I have
visited international schools in Jakarta, Singapore, Moscow, Warsaw, Mumbai,
New Delhi, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Sau Paulo, to name most of them. Though JIS is halfway around the world, many
of the students are Americans, and many more will be applying to attend American
colleges and universities. The Canadian
government is being maddeningly quiet for whatever reason, so in my view the
educational community needs to raise hell.
Look, I know there are human rights violations all over the world that
make this one look tepid, but this is one we can do something about. Wake up the Twitter world at #Freeneilandferdi
and let’s get viral. For those
interested in detail, a chronology prepared by a vigilant JIS parent of the
entire set of bizarre proceedings is posted just below this.
