Court condemns Indonesian teacher
Herry Wirawan, an Indonesian instructor, was sentenced to death on Monday for rapping 13 girls at an Islamic school.
The court upheld prosecutors’ request for the death penalty after he was first sentenced to life in prison.
The case of teacher Wirawan startled Indonesia and brought attention to the need to protect children at religious boarding schools from sexual abuse.
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Prosecutors who had sought the death penalty filed an appeal after he was sentenced to life in prison by a court in Bandung in February.
“(We) hereby punish the defendant with the death penalty,” the judge said in a statement posted on the Bandung High Court’s website on Monday.
Ira Mambo, Wirawan’s lawyer, declined to comment on whether an appeal will be filed, citing the need to see the whole court judgement.
Before reacting, a representative for the local prosecutor’s office said the office will wait for the final verdict.
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A judge claimed in February that between 2016 and 2021, Wirawan sexually groomed 13 girls between the ages of 12 and 16 and pregnant eight of his victims.
Officials in Indonesia, including the country’s minister of child safety, have backed calls for the death sentence, despite the fact that the country’s human rights commission, which opposes the death penalty, has declared it is not appropriate.
Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim majority country, includes thousands of Islamic boarding schools and other religious schools, which are often the only means of obtaining an education for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
