In Indonesia there is still tremendous social pressure in some parts of the country for girls to get married at a young age. At the same time, Indonesia’s societal obsession with outmoded conservative ideas about virginity have seen both the Indonesian military and police defend the continued use of scientifically baseless and traumatic virginity testing.
It appears aspects of both these cultural elements combined to allow a tragic case of sexual abuse to take place in the Polewali Mandar Regency of West Sulawesi, where a 47-year-old man was recently arrested for sexually assaulting his son’s 16-year-old bride.
The Wonomulyo district police arrested the man, identified as MA, after he was reported to have molested his son’s fiance, identified as JW. Complicating the whole story is that, according to media reports, MA is JW’s uncle and thus his son is her cousin.
After his arrest, MA confessed to the police that he had “done something indecent” to test the virginity of his son’s future wife on multiple occasions but argued that he was justified because she was known to have many male friends.
“Up to now, she is known to have many close friends. It was only to test, pak,” MA said as quoted by Kompas today.
However, the victim claimed to have been abused 10 times in total. JW, who was set to marry MA’s son just after yesterday’s Idul Adha holiday, told the police that she was afraid that the wedding would be cancelled if she did not allow MA to keep assaulting her (the wedding has been called off for now).
Wonomulyo Police Chief Jufri Hamid said that MA had already been charged with violating the country’s Child Protection Act but investigators were still questioning the perpetrator and other witnesses, including members of their families.
Human Rights Watch has released disturbing reports on the Indonesian military and police’s use of “virginity testing” on female recruits, an abusive and anachronistic practice that has absolutely no scientific validity. A follow-up report by released last year revealed that the practice of virginity testing is still being imposed on female recruits, although they are being euphemistically classified as “psychological” examinations for “mental health and morality reasons.”
