Prosecutors demanded the owner and an employee of the Princess House Childcare, where a three-month-old baby died in May of suspected negligence, be sentenced to three and four years in prison, respectively, for violating Indonesia’s child protection law.
“The defendant has placed … a child in a wrongful situation and neglect,” prosecutor Heppy Maulia said today at the Denpasar District Court, as quoted by Kumparan.
Police arrested the owner and an employee of the child daycare, identified as Ni Made Sudiana Putri and Listiana (Tina), back in May, both of whom were allegedly responsible for negligence leading to the death of a baby girl who had been under their care.
The incident occurred on May 9, when a man named Andika dropped off his two children – a boy and a baby girl – with the Princess House Childcare, located in Denpasar. When the children’s mother and grandmother came by to pick them up in the evening, only his son came out. They were told that the baby girl was still waiting in a line, and so the grandmother waited while the mother took her son home first.
Only after the grandmother insisted on entering the premises of the daycare was she told that the baby has actually been brought to the emergency unit of a local hospital. By the time Andika himself arrived at the hospital, he saw his baby daughter connected to cardiac devices.
“The doctor told me that by the time the baby arrived in the emergency unit, she was already dead. Her hands and mouth had already turned blue. I think that my child was already dead when she was at the daycare,” Andika, who immediately filed a police report, told the local media in May.
According to Heppy, the daycare has been running since 2011 and that Putri hired her employees by putting up job ads on online classifieds marketplace OLX. She added that employees were not required to have any prior experience or education on childcare.
Official investigation showed Tina placing the baby on her side and then leaving her alone to tend to the other babies for more than an hour, as reported by Kumparan. By the time Tina returned to check on the baby, she was already limp.
Putri then instructed for the baby to be taken to a local hospital, and though the baby was promptly attended to by the doctors, she died not long after. Autopsy results reportedly showed that the baby girl had died after experiencing difficulty breathing.
Prosecutors also demanded that Putri and Tina be individually fined IDR50 million (US$ 3,560). Under Indonesia’s child protection law, the suspects could face up to five years in prison and fined a maximum amount of IDR100 million (US$ 7,122).
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