A 19-year-old babysitter in Pariaman, West Sumatra has been arrested in an extremely disturbing case of sexual assault against a baby.
The suspect, identified by her initials VV, allegedly violated her employer’s child, aged 8 months, to please her husband.
According to reports, on Aug. 5, the child’s mother, who had grown suspicious of VV’s behavior, peeked into a room where VV was caring for the child and found that the babysitter was rubbing a perfume bottle against the baby’s genitalia. At the same time, VV was in the middle of a video call with her husband, who was in Medan, North Sumatra.
Police arrested VV following a complaint by the mother, and the babysitter confessed to having violated the baby in the same manner on four separate occasions.
“It’s what her husband wanted. Sometimes it’s not just [the baby] who became a victim, sometimes the suspect filmed herself. We found a video of the suspect inserting the bottle into her own genitalia,” Pariaman Police Crime Investigation Unit Head Ardiansyah Rolindo Saputra said on Tuesday.
Police also obtained evidence indicating that VV consumed meth the day before she was caught.
VV has been charged with sexual assault against a minor, which is punishable by up to 15 years in prison under Indonesia’s Child Protection Law.
Indonesia introduced harsher penalties, including the death penalty and chemical castration, for pedophiles and child sex offenders in 2016. However, activists say that the threat of severe punishment has not been as successful a deterrent as the government hoped, as sexual assault against children continue to be a serious problem in Indonesia.
