Sexual predators use Facebook to kidnap, traffic Indonesian girls
Source: Agencies |
October 30, 2012, Tuesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
WHEN a 14-year-old girl received a Facebook friend request from an older man she didn't know, she accepted it out of curiosity. It's a click she will forever regret, leading to a brutal story that has repeated itself as sexual predators find new ways to exploit Indonesia's growing obsession with social media.
The junior high student was quickly smitten by the man's smooth online flattery. They exchanged phone numbers, and his attention increased with rapid-fire texts. He convinced her to meet in a mall, and she found him just as charming in person.
They agreed to meet again. After telling her mom she was going to visit a sick girlfriend on her way to church choir practice, she climbed into the man's minivan near her home in Depok on the outskirts of Jakarta.
The man, a 24-year-old who called himself Yogi, drove her an hour to the town of Bogor, West Java. There, he locked her in a small room inside a house with at least five other girls aged 14 to 17. She was drugged and raped repeatedly - losing her virginity in the first attack.
After one week of torture, her captor told her she was being sold and shipped to the faraway island of Batam, known for its seedy brothels and child sex tourism that caters to men from nearby Singapore.
So far this year, 27 of the 129 children reported missing to Indonesia's National Commission for Child Protection are believed to have been abducted after meeting their captors on Facebook, said the group's chairman Arist Merdeka Sirait. One of the 27 has been found dead.
In the month since the Depok girl was found near a bus terminal on September 30, there have been at least seven reports of young girls in Indonesia being abducted by people they met on Facebook.
Although no solid data exists, police and aid groups that work on trafficking issues say it seems to be a particularly big problem in the Southeast Asian archipelago.
50 million users
Websites that track social media say Indonesia has nearly 50 million people signed up for Facebook, making it one of the world's top users after the US. Its capital Jakarta was recently named the most active Twitter city by Paris-based social media monitoring company Semiocast. In addition, networking groups such as BlackBerry and Yahoo Messenger are wildly popular on mobile phones.
Many young Indonesians, and their parents, are unaware of the dangers of allowing strangers to see their personal information online. "We are racing against time, and the technology frenzy over Facebook is a trend among teenagers here," Sirait said. "Police should move faster, or many more girls will become victims."
The 27 Facebook-related abductions reported to the commission this year in Indonesia have already exceed 18 similar cases it received in all of 2011. Overall, the National Task Force Against Human Trafficking said 435 children were trafficked last year, mostly for sexual exploitation.
Many who fight child sex crimes in Indonesia believe the real numbers are much higher. Missing children are often not reported to authorities. Stigma and shame surround sexual abuse in the world's largest Muslim-majority country.
An ECPAT International report estimates that each year, 40,000 to 70,000 children are involved in trafficking, pornography or prostitution in Indonesia, a nation of 240 million where many remain impoverished.
The US State Department has also warned that more Indonesian girls are being recruited using social media networks. In a report last year, it said traffickers have "resorted to outright kidnapping of girls and young women for sex trafficking within the country and abroad."
The junior high student was quickly smitten by the man's smooth online flattery. They exchanged phone numbers, and his attention increased with rapid-fire texts. He convinced her to meet in a mall, and she found him just as charming in person.
They agreed to meet again. After telling her mom she was going to visit a sick girlfriend on her way to church choir practice, she climbed into the man's minivan near her home in Depok on the outskirts of Jakarta.
The man, a 24-year-old who called himself Yogi, drove her an hour to the town of Bogor, West Java. There, he locked her in a small room inside a house with at least five other girls aged 14 to 17. She was drugged and raped repeatedly - losing her virginity in the first attack.
After one week of torture, her captor told her she was being sold and shipped to the faraway island of Batam, known for its seedy brothels and child sex tourism that caters to men from nearby Singapore.
So far this year, 27 of the 129 children reported missing to Indonesia's National Commission for Child Protection are believed to have been abducted after meeting their captors on Facebook, said the group's chairman Arist Merdeka Sirait. One of the 27 has been found dead.
In the month since the Depok girl was found near a bus terminal on September 30, there have been at least seven reports of young girls in Indonesia being abducted by people they met on Facebook.
Although no solid data exists, police and aid groups that work on trafficking issues say it seems to be a particularly big problem in the Southeast Asian archipelago.
50 million users
Websites that track social media say Indonesia has nearly 50 million people signed up for Facebook, making it one of the world's top users after the US. Its capital Jakarta was recently named the most active Twitter city by Paris-based social media monitoring company Semiocast. In addition, networking groups such as BlackBerry and Yahoo Messenger are wildly popular on mobile phones.
Many young Indonesians, and their parents, are unaware of the dangers of allowing strangers to see their personal information online. "We are racing against time, and the technology frenzy over Facebook is a trend among teenagers here," Sirait said. "Police should move faster, or many more girls will become victims."
The 27 Facebook-related abductions reported to the commission this year in Indonesia have already exceed 18 similar cases it received in all of 2011. Overall, the National Task Force Against Human Trafficking said 435 children were trafficked last year, mostly for sexual exploitation.
Many who fight child sex crimes in Indonesia believe the real numbers are much higher. Missing children are often not reported to authorities. Stigma and shame surround sexual abuse in the world's largest Muslim-majority country.
An ECPAT International report estimates that each year, 40,000 to 70,000 children are involved in trafficking, pornography or prostitution in Indonesia, a nation of 240 million where many remain impoverished.
The US State Department has also warned that more Indonesian girls are being recruited using social media networks. In a report last year, it said traffickers have "resorted to outright kidnapping of girls and young women for sex trafficking within the country and abroad."
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
