An Indonesian district court has ordered that a teacher be chemically castrated for sexually abusing more than a dozen schoolboys.
Rahmat Slamet Santoso, 30, was also sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined US$7,200 for the attacks on 15 boys aged 11-14 in Indonesia’s second-largest city, Surabaya, in East Java.
Dwi Purwadi, head of the panel of judges that issued the ruling on Nov. 18, said the castration was in accordance with a 2016 child protection law but added that the punishment would only last three years.
After three years, his sexual desires will be restored to a normal condition, she said.
Santoso was accused of sexually assaulting the boys between 2016 and this year while serving as a mentor in the Indonesian Scout Movement or Pramuka. The boys targeted were from six junior high schools and one elementary school in Surabaya.
He was arrested in July when parents of some of the victims made a complaint about him. Police said he would invite boys in his charge to his house and molest them.
The chemical castration will come in the form of a testosterone suppressant injected into Santoso.
Arist Merdeka Sirait, chairman of the National Commission of Child Protection, welcomed the sentence, saying strict punishments are needed “for predators who are destroying our children’s future.”
Rights groups took a different view.
Asfinawati, director of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation, condemned the use of chemical castration and said a longer jail sentence would have been more appropriate.
“He should have been jailed for more than 12 years and given counseling,” she told ucanews. “Castration will not solve sex cases.”
Choirul Anam, of the National Commission of Human Rights, condemned the sentence and called on President Joko Widodo to revoke immediately the 2016 governmental regulation on child protection sanctioning chemical castration.
However, it is unclear who will administer the injections after the Indonesian Medical Association subsequently refused to do so, saying it was in breach of medical ethics.
The association declared this stance after Indonesia sentenced an offender to chemical castration for the first time in August this year when judges handed down the sentence to a rapist who attacked nine young girls in Mojokerto, East Java.
