October 30, 2025 | 12:03 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Victims of sexual exploitation suffer twice over. Restorative justice is not an appropriate way to address this.
THE teenager with initials RTA truly suffered a terrible fate. The 14-year-old girl who worked as a spa therapist suffered twice over. She was found dead on a waste ground near Delta Spa in Pejaten, Pasar Minggu, South Jakarta, at the beginning of October 2025. The Indonesian Child Protection Commission said that RTA was a victim of sexual exploitation.
The family of RTA filed a police report regarding the alleged exploitation of a child. But they subsequently withdrew this report. The police recently floated the possibility that the death of RTA being resolved through the mechanism of restorative justice, claiming that the family has reached an agreement with the Delta Spa management.
Police cannot simply close the case of RTA’s death, even if the family has withdrawn their report. The death of a citizen is not a complaint-based crime, especially since the sequence of events before RTA’s death is suspicious.
RTA was reported to have fallen from the top floor of the Delta Spa employee dormitory, not far from where her body was found. Questioning of witnesses revealed that RTA had felt threatened because she was often followed by security guards for no apparent reason.
And RTA’s employment at the massage parlor also raises questions. She was a minor when she began working as a therapist. Therefore, as well as child exploitation, there is a suspicion of human trafficking. This means that if the police stop the investigation, the facts behind the death of RTA will never become public.
The application of restorative justice often leads to injustice for the victims of sexual crimes. The police use this method as a shortcut to finish complex investigations. Instead of revealing the truth, restorative justice is often an excuse to cover up crimes. In other words, restorative justice is a form of impunity for perpetrators.
The police track record in handling cases of violence against women is poor. The police do not have an appropriate perspective if the victims of crime are women. As a result, victims suffer twice over: they are victims of crime and then do not receive legal protection.
A survey carried out by Magdalene.co together with Lentera Sintas Indonesia found that 93 percent of victims of sexual crimes are reluctant to file a report because they feel that law enforcement officers will not handle their cases seriously. If this trend continues, sexual violence cases will only rise because police fail to treat them with urgency.
In order to prevent this, the police need to put an end to restorative justice being used to resolve sexual crimes. After all, sexual violence and crimes against children are not complaint-based cases, especially if they result in death. The investigation into the death of RTA could show the public that the police are serious in responding to femicide and sexual violence.
Exploitation and sexual crimes are ancient and primitive crimes that should have no place in the modern world. With this perspective, the police should not place such uncivilized crimes into the category of restorative justice settlement. The victims of these crimes are human beings, who have families, and suffer trauma that lasts a lifetime.
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