Putting Indonesia's Children First: Orphanage Abuse in Spotlight
Allegations of abuse at a children's home in Tangerang have raised concerns about other facilities nationwide
Arist Merdeka Sirait, the chairman of the National Commission for Child Protection. (Komnas PA). (JG Photo/Fajrin Raharjo)
Jakarta. Ali, like most youths in Indonesia labeled "orphans," has a family, but has since the sixth grade been placed in the care of an orphanage because his parents had no means of taking care of him, much less keeping him in school.
Today, Ali is 19, an undergraduate on a scholarship at a private university in Jakarta, and one of the success stories of the Putra Nusa Orphanage in Central Jakarta.
"Living in this place has been such a blessing for me," says Ali, who should have left the orphanage when he turned 18 but has been allowed to stay on while he completes his studies.
"The carers have been patient and helpful in accommodating me, and the positive atmosphere has given me the chance to succeed academically. This place I call home is irreplaceable," he tells the Jakarta Globe.
Ali is one of the fortunate ones, children from destitute families or broken homes who have wound up at a properly managed institution that has given them a chance at a bright future.
Not everyone will be so lucky, says Eti Nurbaeti, the treasurer at the Putra Nusa home.
She says that while some of the orphanage's former wards are now studying at places like the University of Indonesia or the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), two of the country's top centers of higher learning, the majority can't expect to aim as high and have to settle for what few job opportunities are available right out of school.
"We've been asking the Jakarta government to provide jobs for the children after they finish vocational school, but they've ignored our requests," Eti says. "The only thing we can do is guide the children based on their passions, so that when they finish school they can immediately be employed by any institution."
She says Putra Nusa is currently home to 45 boys and 40 girls, ranging in age from 7 to 19 years. She says 38 of them are parentless, eight are from broken homes, and the rest have families that are destitute.
Taking advantage
The issue of the country's orphanages shot into the public glare last month with allegations that children at a home in Tangerang, the Samuel Orphanage, had been mistreated and abused by the staff.
Twenty-six of the children have since been removed and placed in other homes, including infants as young as three months. Police are now investigating the orphanage's administrator, Chemy Watulingas, and his wife Yuni for allegations of abuse.
The question of the orphanage's legitimacy is also in question, with Arist Merdeka Sirait, the chairman of the National Commission for Child Protection (Komnas PA), who led the evacuation of the children from the facility, saying he suspected Chemy had no license to run and orphanage.
"The owner took advantage of the children's vulnerable positions by mistreating them, restricting their freedom of expression, and forcing them to obey rules," Arist tells the Globe.
He says he believes the practice has been going on for years, and has left permanent psychological scars on the children.
"Children have different ways of dealing with abuse," he says. "Some will isolate themselves because they develop a high level of distrust against people, often feeling insecure. Others become very aggressive and tend to pick fights with their peers."
A lawyer representing the children says the latter appears to be the case among some of the children taken from the Samuel Orphanage, who were reported to be hitting one another and stealing items at the safe house provided for them by the Social Affairs Ministry.
"They usually steal food items," the lawyer said as quoted by Merdeka.com. "Whenever a guest comes to visit, they root into their belongings without permission."
Arist says Komnas HAM received 3,039 reports of child abuse last year, an increase of 15 percent from the 2,637 cases reported to the commission in 2012.
But he says these figures are just the tip of the iceberg, with the vast majority of child abuse cases going unreported, either because the victim has no recourse to channels of grievances or because they are too afraid of the consequences.
Orphanages, he says, have a duty to protect the children in their care, but many unscrupulous ones simply take in the children to increase their chances of getting funding from the government, charitable institutions and private donors.
"Children must be allowed to know their rights," Arist says. "For children living in an institution like an orphanage or a boarding school, where they are kept under tight surveillance by adult guardians, it is the latter who are responsible for explaining these rights to them so that the children won't be reluctant to report crimes or offenses to a figure of trust or perhaps to the police."
Unregistered orphanages
There are around 8,000 orphanages throughout Indonesia, 10 of them run by the central government, 200 by regional governments and the rest by private institutions, according to data from the Social Affairs Ministry.
The data show 2,000 of them do not have the requisite permits to operate as orphanages.
Samsudi, the ministry's director general for social rehabilitation, whose office oversees orphanages, says the permits ensure that a given institution has the necessary facilities and trained human resources to properly care for the children.
Any orphanage found not to be complying with those standards is answerable to the regional social affairs office, he says, noting that in the case of the Samuel Orphanage, the Tangerang Social Services Agency has ordered the home shut down pending the police investigation.
Eti from the Putra Nusa Orphanage blasts the Samuel administrators as "inhumane," saying that anyone who abused their responsibility to care for vulnerable children should be jailed immediately.
"I fear it will take a long time for the children to recover, emotionally and mentally," she says.
The Putra Nusa Orphanage, established in 1958, is registered with the Jakarta Social Service Agency and has a raft of permits, says Abdulloh T.R., the head of the home.
He says it is funded by the Jakarta Social Services Agency, individual donors, and charitable institutions like the Dharma Bhakti Foundation.
Children like 14-year-old Friskila would have been fortunate to end up there. Instead, she found herself at the Samuel Orphanage, where she wound up taking care of a newborn baby named Felicia for the next one-and-a-half years, until their rescue last month.
She says Felicia was given up by her parents because of a deformity in the fingers of her right hand.
She denies some of the more outrageous claims of physical abuse, saying that at most Yuni used to pinch the children or get angry at them, but says the older children like her effectively worked there, taking care of the younger ones.
She also says the orphanage had a lot of donors, particularly during Christian holidays. But Chemy, a Pentecostal minister, held all the money and didn't pay to get more staff or improve the facilities.
Government inaction
Maria Ulfa, a former chairwoman of the Indonesian Commission for Child Protection (KPAI), says it is shocking that officials never flagged the alleged abuse at the Samuel Orphanage in the 15 years that it had been in operation.
She says the KPAI first investigated allegations of abuse at the home two years ago and filed a report with the police, urging them to shut it down.
"It's truly regrettable that this case ever happened, and that there was no earlier action by the police or the social services agency," she says.
Maria cites a 2011 Social Affairs Ministry regulation on child care service providers, which requires all licensed providers to provide regular reports to the government and for government officials to conduct routine inspections of the providers.
"The Samuel Orphanage case epitomizes the lack of monitoring and supervision by the local social services agency, because it has been allowed to operate unhindered for 15 years," she says.
She says the Socials Affairs Ministry must be more proactive about checking on orphanages, and not assume that their regular reports necessarily reflect the true conditions in the homes.
"The ministry should have the data and records of all registered, unregistered and illegal orphanages from all local-level social services agencies, so that it can evaluate them thoroughly and set up a better system to monitor the running of the orphanages throughout the country," Maria says.
Arist says the concept of the Indonesian orphanage needs to be overhauled completely.
Rather than see them as a place of last resort for the destitute, at best, or a means for generating tax-free money through donations, at worst, orphanages should put the care of children first and foremost, he says.
"We need to set a standard for building orphanages," he says. "An orphanage ideally has to have a playground, hygienic restrooms, a nice pantry, a health clinic with a doctor, a recreation room, adequate sleeping quarters for toddlers and children and employees. There's no reason to build more orphanages if we can't meet those standards."
He says that with so many orphanages not registered with the authority, and the likelihood of abuse taking place in many of them as well as in the registered one, cases like the Samuel Orphanage one are bound to recur.
"Many orphanage owners think they 'own' the orphans, but that's wrong," Arist says. "I would prefer if the children could be adopted by a family, which would be a much better environment for them. But with so many children in orphanages there's no easy way to achieve this."
Maria agrees that children would be much better off in a family environment, and suggests that destitute families thinking of putting their children in an orphanage should instead try to find a family willing to care for their child.
"Children are in better care in a family environment, either in their own families, or when necessary, in an adopted one," the former commissioner says.
Back at the Putra Nusa Orphanage, 15-year-old Atrian is looking forward to a brighter future than his desperately poor family could have given him. At the government safe house, Friskila is waiting for the chance to complete her general equivalency test for the sixth grade.
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