After her identity and involvement in a celebrity prostitution scandal were revealed to the public by the police in early January (despite the fact that she had only been classified as a witness in the case, making the disclosure of her identity unethical by law enforcement), Indonesian actress Vanessa Angel has become the subject of endless salacious stories in the local media.
Read: Privacy rights, the other victim in Indonesia’s latest celebrity prostitution scandal
But police say the actress has now also become the subject of a criminal investigation for potentially violating the country’s strict anti-pornography laws.
“I convey to media colleagues, regarding the investigation into cases of online prostitution, we submit related to the results of the investigation that rather than just being a witness, [Vanessa Angel] has today been named a suspect,” said East Java Regional Police Chief Luki Hermawan yesterday as quoted by Detik.
According to Luki, Vanessa has been charged with violating article 27 of the country’s controversial Law on Electronic Transactions and Information (UU ITE), which criminalizes the creation or distribution of any digital materials that could be considered indecent.
The police chief said the materials in this case were photos and videos Vanessa took herself and sent to the man allegedly acting as her pimp.
Luki also said that Vanessa was only designated a criminal suspect after consulting with relevant experts, including criminologists, linguists and representatives of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) and the Ministry of Religion.
If found guilty of violating UU ITE, Vanessa could potentially face up to six years in jail.
Vanessa Angel and a model, Avriellya Shaqila, were arrested by police in Surabaya for their alleged involvement in a highly lucrative prostitution ring on January 5.
On the day of her arrest, police identified Vanessa Angel as one of the women they had secured, even though she had only been designated as a witness at that time and standard police procedure is to not reveal the identity of witnesses to the public. Since then, stories about her case have dominated much of the local media (as the country’s semi-annual celebrity prostitution scandals always do).
Read: The tale of a pimp and her celebrity prostitutes in Jakarta – in the 1970s
In Indonesia, the act of prostitution, specifically the transaction between sex worker and client, is not a crime, as the law only states that pimping or the facilitation of prostitution are punishable by law (although MUI is pushing the government to criminalize sex workers and their customers in light of this latest prostitution scandal).
Despite the overwhelming likelihood that the indecent materials being used by police to charge Vanessa under UU ITE were never meant for wide distribution, the vagueness of the law gives authorities the jurisdiction to criminalize pornographic materials made for private use (as happened to rock star Nazril “Ariel” Irham) or shared between only two people (as almost happened to firebrand cleric Rizieq Shihab).
