The Jakarta Post had between 26 July and 7 August a series of articles, also an editorial on the difficult issue of the taboo on information about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church of Indonesia. The editorial of 4 August wrote: 'Last week The Jakarta Post published a series of articles addressing the issue of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, which many may perceive as a “taboo” as it could undermine the Church’s authority. It was the second time that the Post collaborated with Tirto.id after our joint investigative report on sexual abuse on campuses last year. Our recent tandem effort followed a report published by a West Jakarta parish magazine last December about 56 cases of alleged sexual abuse within the Church community.' It turned out that it is still difficult for Catholic leadership to acknowledge these cases. The priest Joseph Kristanto, secretary of the Catholic Commission on Seminary Education reported 56 cases in a confidential report, but archbishop of Jakarta, Cardinal Suharyo denied that he knew any case. Confronted with the official report he stated that it was confidential, the same status as sins confessed to a priest and therefore should be silenced! 'Breaking the taboo' is quite difficult! The same I heard about several bishops who were dismissed from their office, cases like Bishop Belo of Dili and more recently the bishop of Ruteng. No reasons for their withdrawal from their function was given, but rumours had stories of sexual stories. In a very open series of statements missionary Dr. John Priori is quoted by Jakarta Post that it would be much better if these cases are openly acknowledged, so that the circuits of gossip can be cleared and rather an open debate about these cases should take place.
These cases are not from the last decades only. In my first volume on Catholics in Indonesia, pp. 270-274 as Document 19) I included one case of 1851 (in fact the only case for the whole period of 1808-1940 found in the archives). A Capuchin Friar Kooy had committed sexual acts with young military trainees in Surabaya, one of them a 14-year old son Pallandt, lieutenant colonel of the army. Through two high Catholic connections, Resident P.J.B. de Parez as Resident of Surabaya and Colonel Count Von Lütsow, as army commander of East Java, the case was silenced, and Father Kooy was sent back to the Netherlands before the case was brought before the court. The letter in Dutch and partly in Latin (where the kernel of his deeds, even in the church building, in the confessional room was told), was like all non-Malay/Indonesian documents not included in the Indonesian translation of this volume. Only in the third volume (with much less documents) translation of all documents was included.
Another case of sexual abuse in the 19th century was in West Java. Tom van den End skipped this case in his publications of documents about the Protestant mission in Sundanese regions, but Maryse Kruithof, who later worked on the same Protestant Mission in West-Java, told it with documentation (about missionary Simon van Eendenburg). I related this in the blog Relindonesia.blogspot.com of 28 December 2014.
For me it was also the first time I read the website Trito.id: a nice resource.
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