Author, Andang Noordin
and
Author, Rebecca Henschke
Designation, BBC Eye Investigations
Published 1 minute ago
Reading Time: 11 minutes
(Warning: Details of this story may disturb you.)
Yusron Azzahidi's heart sank when he heard the voice on the other end of the phone. He had called his sister's number. The sister had messaged him and asked him to call immediately.
But his sister was not on the line. On the phone was the head master of Yusron's old school. He was present at Yusron's family home.
"I knew. I knew exactly what he wanted to talk about," says Yusron.
Ahmed Imanuddin used to call Sumar as “Abah” i.e. “father” by his students. He had a reputation, which was very important for him to maintain.
He was the respected head of an Islamic boarding school on the Indonesian island of Lombok. And Abah, the head master, had come to know that Yusron and his old school friends were collecting statements of many students.
These students said that Abah had sexually exploited them.
Indonesia's National Commission for Women has described sexual abuse in Islamic boarding schools as a national emergency.
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But legal experts say that many such cases do not reach the court. This is because survivors are persuaded to withdraw their allegations or are pressured to remain silent.
And now Abah was demanding the same thing from Yusron on the phone.
Crying, he said, "Hide your teacher's shame. My child, every human being makes mistakes."
But he did not know that Yusron was recording his every word.
The incidents that happened in the school came to light after reaching the university.
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Yusron started investigating Abah a year ago. The reason for this was something said by his former classmate Ziadatur Rahma. Both were brilliant students of Abu Barokat School in Lombok.
Later both of them went to different places for higher education.
Yusron took admission in the capital Jakarta and Ziadatur took admission in Cairo, Egypt. Once he was reminiscing about his school days on the phone.
One night Ziadatur, known as Zia to her friends, told Yusron that Abah had sexually assaulted her when she was 16 years old.
She said that when she came out to go to the toilet during a class, Abah stopped her in the school garden and asked her to go to his house, which was located within the campus.
"After he went inside he told me he loved me."
“He pulled me down so I sat on his lap… Then he started kissing me… He was caressing and touching my body,”
He told the BBC World Service that the head master asked him to do the same again.
But luckily one of Abah's students started knocking rapidly on that closed door. Abah then signaled Zia to leave and she escaped through the back door.
But she says that the impact of this incident was very devastating.
"I felt very dirty, everything was ruined and lost."
After listening to Zia, Yusron was not able to understand what to do. In his school, students were taught to obey their teachers. A major slogan of the school was "Samina wa Atana" meaning "We listen and we obey."
What did these girls endure in school?
But Yusron was not able to get that thing out of his mind.
So she suggested that she and Zia, as well as her school friends Wanda Hamidah and Mahima Eka, gather evidence to support Zia's testimony.
Then gradually, when he talked to his old classmates, other memories also started surfacing. Friends were sharing their information with each other on WhatsApp.
The most important information came from a friend of Wanda's.
He remembered that one night in the last year of his studies, he had seen a little girl crying in the school bathroom.
He also remembered that Abah had come there searching for that girl. His face was red and he was breathing heavily.
This girl was Sukma Rohana. She was still studying in school at that time.
Sukma narrated her ordeal to BBC.
Sukma told us that when she was 17 years old, Abah had asked her to attend the New Year prayers.
She said that when she entered Abah's house, he covered her mouth and asked her to lie down, before he removed her clothes below the waist.
"He continued to speak and said he could no longer control himself."
Sukma said, "He tried to rape me."
"And then I kicked him in the stomach with such force that I got the chance to run away."
He said, "When I looked back while running, the light of his torch was coming towards me."
A phone call came while collecting evidence
As such evidence began to emerge, Yusron began to organize it. He used to talk to the students who made the allegations on phone and prepared notes very carefully.
He prepared a seven-page document. It contained details of allegations of alleged misbehavior against Sukma, Zia and four other former students.
Wanda held a meeting with representatives of Nahdlatul Wathan Diniyah Islamiyah (NWDI). It was an influential organization, which ran his school and hundreds of other schools.
This organization also provided financial assistance for the education of some students studying in Cairo.
Friends told us that this meeting went well. NWDI representatives had said that they would help them take the matter to the police.
But three weeks later, Yusron received a worrying message from his sister. When he called back, Abah was talking on the other end from his family home.
Then it became clear that NWDI had given Yusron's written documents to them.
In Yusron's recording, Abah can be heard saying, "If this reaches the media, I will be ruined."
He requested Yusron to lie for him. He also suggested several stories that Yusron could have used to retract the claims made in his document.
After this Abah also called Zia and put similar pressure on her.
Like Yusron, Zia also recorded this conversation.
In that conversation, according to Zia, Abah admitted to misbehaving with her and requested her to keep quiet.
Why did the investigation have to be stopped?
Sukma told us that once she was called to Abah's house. On reaching there, he found that two police officers and a lawyer of NWDI were waiting for him.
She says they forced her to sign a document. It was written in that document that all his allegations were false.
Her claim is corroborated by a secret recording she made later, when she was talking to Abah's wife Hurmiyati about this.
In the recording, Hurmiyati is heard asking him to respect the "agreement" reached between them, implying that nothing had happened.
She says, "Do you want this thing to follow you for the rest of your life? Do you want it to affect your chances of marriage?"
This series of pressure increased so much that Abah even contacted Yusron's parents. He told them to go to Jakarta and find Yusron at the university.
Yusron's parents could not find him. At that time he was hiding in a hotel.
But this entire incident had a deep impact on his mother. He told his son that this stress was breaking him from within.
Eventually Yusron reluctantly stopped his investigation.
Both came closer, then searched for survivors through social media.
During this time, Yusron and Zia started coming closer to each other. Their friendship turned into a long distance love relationship and they spoke regularly on the phone.
"I could see she was struggling," says Yusron. "She would often say, 'Why do I keep thinking about that thing?'"
Yusron was in a difficult dilemma. On one hand he wanted to help the girl with whom he had fallen in love and on the other hand he had made a promise to his mother.
Then eight months later, Yusron learned about a group that was spreading awareness about sexual abuse in Islamic schools.
This group was founded by a young woman named Ayu Masruroh.
Ayu had earlier helped one of her friends get justice. Her friend had made serious allegations against a teacher from another school.
Now Ayu was posting on social media about the need to speak openly and raise the voice of survivors.
Inspired by this, Zia shared a message on Instagram. He asked those Indonesian students who may have faced any kind of exploitation to contact them.
After this he received a message from another student.
The student told that Abah had allegedly misbehaved with her too.
According to the allegations, this incident took place at a time when Abah had already promised to change himself.
Zia said, "I realized that Abah had not really changed. Everything he said about stopping was a lie."
Eventually Yusron's parents agreed to help Zia and Sukma in their search for justice.
But this time the friends decided to proceed in a different way.
He contacted Ayu. Ayu clearly advised him to take help of a lawyer.
Ayu introduced her to a lawyer who had experience representing survivors in sexual abuse cases.
The lawyer was of the opinion that Sukma's case was the strongest to proceed towards trial.
We asked Abah and Hurmiyati to comment on the allegations made against them, but they did not respond.
NWDI says it is still conducting an internal investigation into the allegations.
The organization also said that it never tried to suppress allegations of sexual abuse.
He says that it is his responsibility to protect the organization's reputation from damage allegedly caused by the actions of any individual.
She is still waiting for police action. Abah still remains in his post.
now what next
Yusron told the BBC, "I was completely exhausted. It was a very difficult time in Jakarta because I was constantly involved in police cases. So when I saw Zia, it was like a drug."
Zia said she was so happy that she "kept talking all the time."
He said, "That's when I realized that he was really serious. He had come all the way to Egypt for me. I trust him. That's why I'm with him."
To some extent, this trust between them is also based on a shared search for justice.
The couple got married last month.
Their lawyer Jocko Jumadi says that he is very impressed by the courage and caution of the students.
He told us that the pressure exerted on people to remain silent was clearly visible in the recordings secretly collected by the students.
He said that these recordings are very important.
Joko said, "Many survivors are mentioned in these. The person concerned himself mentions them. This is very important evidence."
Joko and his team have handled 20 cases of sexual abuse involving Islamic boarding schools in his native West Nusa Tenggara province over the past three years.
He believes that this problem is much bigger.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
We used AI to translate this article, which was originally written in English. A BBC journalist checked this translation before publication. Learn more about how we're using AI.
