A mother of two was arrested in Tabanan over the weekend after she allegedly chained both of her kids for being “too naughty.”
The two children – aged six and three – were found chained at their house by their neighbors last Saturday. One neighbor said he heard crying sounds from the house at around 7:30pm as he was walking to a mosque.
A dark house greeted him and other neighbors when they went to check on the children. One of them was found chained to the window, with the shackle gripped around his neck, and naked save for his diapers. The other child was found in a similar condition but with his legs chained to the door of a guest room.
The mother, UDW, 40, was immediately arrested by the Tabanan Police that same night. Police confiscated a pair of 2-meter-long metal chains and four padlocks.
UDW reportedly left the house that afternoon for work.
“Perhaps […] she forgot to leave the lights on [so] the kids became scared and cried and were heard by the neighbors,” Tabanan Police Ranefli Dian Chandra said yesterday.
“The kids are super active and according to the mother they were naughty all this time.”
The police also named the mother’s boyfriend, IMS, 34, as a suspect in the case.
The Balikpapan-born UDW, however, said that her boyfriend was innocent. Speaking to reporters, UDW insisted that she only wanted to teach her children a lesson.
“It’s like I’m at a dead-end. [I was] emotional. But my intention was only to give a deterrent effect. Not to hurt,” said UDW, who added that she only thought about shackling her kids after her tactic of scaring them into behaving did not work.
UDW admitted that she had tried other ways to discipline the kids, including by beating them once.
She added that the chains were taken from the fence of the house.
The authorities say that they will screen UDW for her mental health on top of the criminal investigation. So far, there have been no suggestions from the authorities that the children were shackled because they suffered from mental health conditions, as is common in parts of Indonesia.
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Under Indonesian law, both UDW and IMS may face at least three years behind bars for child abuse.
