Underaged Murderer

A 10-years-old boy was suspected by the Jakarta Police of murdering his adoptive mother last October. According to the The Jakarta Globe, the National Commission for Child Protection is now trying to save the boy.

Mercy Urged for Child Charged in Jakarta Murder

The National Commission for Child Protection on Wednesday said it was working hard to save a 10-year-old boy, suspected of having stabbed and beaten his adoptive mother to death, from serving up to 15 years in jail.

East Jakarta Police investigators have said the child, who is originally from Nias and is an orphaned survivor of the 2004 tsunami in Aceh, may face charges for violating the 2004 law on domestic violence.

The boy’s adoptive mother, Etty Rochyati, 55, was found dead in a ditch near her house in Ciracas, East Jakarta, in October. She had been found with multiple blows on the head possibly due to being beaten with a blunt instrument and a stab wound to the stomach.

According to police, the boy said Etty had threatened to kick him out of the house if he did not obey her, and told him, “Don’t you know that you have no more mother and father?”

Arist Merdeka Sirait, secretary general of the commission, also known as Komnas Anak, said the charge and the law on which it was based was inappropriate.

If tried, he said, the boy should only be charged with the Criminal Code article on violence leading to death. The charge carries a sentence of up to 10 years but under the Child Protection Law, minors may only serve a third of the sentence, he said.

Arist also argued that police investigators had failed to take into consideration the regular maltreatment of the child by his adoptive mother.

“What the boy did may be seen as self-defense against abuse and was not intentional,” he said.

“If the boy is still threatened with a 15-year prison sentence, the rule of law in Indonesia has been violated and this runs against what the Justice and Human Rights Ministry has planned for in its first 100-day work program,” Arist said.

He added that a memorandum of understanding had been signed by five ministries and the National Police for underage criminal offenders stipulating they no longer be sent to jail but remanded to social institutions instead.

Arist said the commission would push for an out-of-court settlement.

“We are not dealing with the case of a 22-year-old man but a 10-year-old who is unstable and still has a long life ahead of him,” he said.

He also said that Komnas Anak recommended that if the child, whose identity has been withheld, did not face trial, then he should be returned to the care of the state or to social services to get the appropriate psychological counseling.

“Underaged criminal offenders should be given restorative justice — meaning giving them back to their parents or to social institutions,” he said.

The family of the victim, who Arist said has agreed to drop charges against the boy, will meet with judges of the East Jakarta Court, police investigators, the commission and the Legal Aid Foundation to discuss the best way to move forward with the case.

Parental responsibilities

I always believed that parents all over the world played a very dominant role in the development of their children who are under the age of 18 years old, due to which fact they have to be fully responsible for their children.

However, there are certain conditions in which some parents want to be free of their natural responsibility for their children .
And that's perhaps what Madlyn Primoff, a New York lawyer, has in her mind when she kicked her 10 and 12 years old daughters out her car one Sunday.
According to the New York Times, at that time Ms. Primoff was so frustrated with her two daughters who would not stopped bickering, that after driving 3 miles from her home in downtown White Plains, N.Y., she kicked those children. She was later arrested by the Police on charges of endangering the welfare of children, and stayed overnight in jail and released after she paid a bail of US$ 1,500.00 and has to return back to the Court on 21 May 2009.

Beside that, in Indonesia currently there has been controversial news reports about a woman i.e Daisy Fajirina, who has allowed her own 16 years old beautiful daugther i.e. Manohara, to be married last August to a 30 years old Prince of Kelantan, Malaysia, whom she and her daughter barely knew. Daisy is currently complaining to the news media that Manohara (now 17) has been brutally mistreated by her husband (now 31), and she therefore demanded our government and everyone else to help her get her daughter back.

Although I symphatize with Daisy in facing her problem, however considering that our Mariage Law No 1/1974 stipulated that Indonesian under the age of 21 years old can only be married if their parents permit them to do so, therefore I believed that she played a very dominant role in the problem that her daughter is facing now.

I am very sad to know that some parents can be very devastated in handling their children. I believed that if parents would always stick to their responsibilities, they would not have very bad problems with their children.