JIS won’t fire head before verdict

JAKARTA. The Jakarta International School (JIS) will not be taking action against any of its teaching staff or its principal, Timothy Carr, before all the trials have been heard concerning the alleged rape of several of its students.

Harry Ponto, a senior lawyer for JIS in the case, made the statement on Saturday in response to the Education and Culture Ministry’s director general of early childhood education programs, Lydia Freyani Hawadi, who recently urged JIS to fire Carr for negligence and failing to protect students from sexual assaults at the South Jakarta school. 

She said that firing the headmaster would be a concrete move that JIS should take to indicate its seriousness about the case.

Harry said that according to an internal investigation of the kindergarten, there was no indication that the sexual attacks were the result of negligence on Carr’s part, and that the school’s foundation would not take any action before Carr and/or any other teachers were found guilty in the case. 

“I think it is too early to fire Carr; the court has yet to prove that Carr was guilty by omission,” Harry told reporters. 

He insisted that the sexual assaults, which allegedly targeted more than one student, were perpetrated by external actors, namely outsourced janitors from the cleaning service company PT ISS, who had been arrested by the police.

Harry added, however, that JIS would cooperate fully with law enforcers, including the court, and would comply with the court’s decision, including if Carr should be found responsible for the sexual assaults.

“Carr remains ready to be summoned and questioned [by the police and court] at anytime,” he said. “This is a law-based country, so we respect the court and the law. Whether or not he is found guilty, the court will decide.”

Separately, National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas PA) chairman Arist Merdeka Sirait, who reported Carr to the police earlier this month, said if Carr was found guilty, not only should he be required to leave his post but he could also face up to 15 years in prison and a fine of Rp 200 million (US$17,345).

Arist said Carr and the school’s administrators had violated the Child Protection Law and the National Education System Law.

Komnas PA filed the police report against the JIS principal and the school’s administrators for allowing repeated sexual assaults on the school’s grounds, as well as for not having a license to run a kindergarten.

Asked to comment on a recent police report alleging that a senior member of JIS’ teaching staff had launched sexual assaults on several other students at the school, Harry denied the report and said the school had found no involvement of any teachers in the cases.

“We conducted the internal investigation and did not find any senior-level teacher implicated in sexually abusing our students,” he said, adding, however, that the school respected the latest police report and would wait for the court to hear the allegation.

This week, several other students reported one of the kindergarten teachers to the National Police’s Criminal Investigations Directorate (Bareskrim) for sexual assault.

The lawyer for the students’ families, OC Kaligis, said the suspect was not an outsourced cleaner, as in the first JIS rape allegation, but was “higher up in the school”.

“One of the school’s staff members, in a senior position, raped these students,” Kaligis said. “These new victims are all Caucasians,” he revealed. 

However, Kaligis refused to identify the suspect or disclose the number of students who had reported these latest allegations