The teacher was accused of r*ping at least 13 students between the ages of 11 and 14 from 2016 to 2021 at the school, in hotel rooms or at rented apartments.

An Islamic boarding school teacher who was found guilty of having unlawful carnal knowledge of thirteen students and impregnating nine of them in Indonesia has been sentenced to life imprisonment.

The judge said that teacher Herry Wirawan had sexually groomed the 13 girls, who were between 12 and 16 years old, and impregnated at least nine of his victims, some of whom suffered injuries from the r*pe.

The case was concluded in court today with the man being sentenced.

‘Wirawan was proven guilty…of the crimes of purposely committing violence, forcing intercourse on more than one victim repeatedly,’ Judge Yohannes Purnomo Suryo Adi told the court in the city of Bandung in West Java.

Wirawan pleaded guilty and apologized to his victims and their families during the trial. His lawyer, Ira Mambo, said he would speak to his client about whether to appeal the verdict.

The teacher was accused of r*ping at least 13 students between the ages of 11 and 14 from 2016 to 2021 at the school, in hotel rooms or at rented apartments, according to the indictment.

At least nine babies reportedly were born as the result of the r*pes.

Indonesian officials, including the country’s child protection minister, backed calls for the death penalty, though the country’s human rights commission, which opposes the death penalty, said it was not appropriate.

Wirawan arrived in court in handcuffs and kept his head down as the judge sentenced him. The court said restitution for the victims will be paid by the government.

The chairman of Indonesia’s Child Protection Commission said Tuesday’s verdict meant ‘justice for the victims has been served’.

But a family member of one of the victims told AFP news agency he was ‘very disappointed’ that Wirawan did not receive a harsher sentence and warned that leniency would embolden other abusers.

‘This wound will never be healed as long as we live, maybe until we die. The pain we are feeling is indescribable. We don’t feel heard,‘ said Hidmat Dijaya, an uncle of one of the 13 victims.

‘If the sentence is lenient like this, there will be more Islamic teachers who will abuse children,‘ he added.

‘We will let God as the highest judge punish him. We can only pray because those judges failed to represent our hurt and pain.’

Dedeh Marlina, a 42-year-old housewife living near the school where Herry taught, said she was relieved the perpetrator had been stopped but that the damage had been done.

‘I know most of them came from poor families in remote areas…unfortunately they are now carrying the burden of what happened,’ she said.

The case drew a public outcry over the number of r*pes and the length of time they occurred.

Last year two teachers at a boarding school in South Sumatra were arrested for sexually abusing 26 male students over the course of a year.

And in 2020, a boarding school leader in East Java was sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexually assaulting 15 female students.

President Joko Widodo last month called on parliament to approve a bill on the “elimination of sexual violence”, which seeks to combat sex crimes and provide justice to victims, including in cases of marital rape.

The bill was drafted in 2016 but has run into delays, with Islamic groups complaining it promoted promiscuity and conservative lawmakers calling for it to criminalize extramarital sex and LGBT relationships.