Grief hangs heavy over Bekasi farmer's modest home

Grief hangs heavy over Bekasi farmer's modest home

By Johannes Simbolon

BEKASI (JP): Grief hangs over the house which stands a stones
throw away from the dirty river that separates the Bekasi and
Bogor regencies. It is only one kilometer away from the Jagorawi
toll road, in the middle of a vast field which a developer wants
to turn into a housing estate.

It was in this house that a group of criminals brutally raped
a mother and her two teenage daughters in the presence of Acan,
the husband and father, in the early morning of Monday, July 24.

It is the house that has made hundreds of people cry and rage.

The birds perching in the lush trees around the house where
silent on Friday. The three cows -- the most valuable property
Acan has except for his large plot -- were also quiet in the
stable to the right of the house. They sullenly watched reporters
take turns examining the partly concrete house.

Acan had locked himself up alone in the house. When it was
time for the midday prayer, the potato farmer in his forties left
his house, eyes to the ground, and washed in the bathroom on the
right side of the house. He was going to pray.

Reporters who had spent long hours waiting for Acan to leave
hastily greeted him. He quietly answered, but his face quickly
turned gloomy when a reporter tried to ask for details of what
had happened on the fateful Monday.

He locked himself in his house.

It was the last time he was seen. Yesterday the police moved
him to the police station where his wife and daughters are
staying.

The man looked crushed.

"Blood stains were found on the bedsheets," reported the local
newspapers.

The rapists reportedly robbed several houses before coming to
Acan's house. They took nothing from Acan's house although he
offered all his property, including his cows, to the them in
exchange for his wife and daughters.

"Both of the girls, like their mother, are very pretty or, as
we usually term it, bunga desa (the village flowers)," said
Wartono, Acan's brother-in-law's gardener.

The day before the rape, recalled Wartono, around five men
passed the house and asked for directions. It was Acan's wife who
answered them, he said, while one of her daughters was then
taking a bath in the outdoor bathroom. The bathroom walls are
only one meter high and the men could see the upper part of her
body, he said.

It was reported that the rapists arrived at the house at 2
a.m. They soon herded at machete point the five youngsters in the
house -- Sarto, Acan's hired gardener, Ali, Acan's son, and three
of Ali's friends, who were sleeping on the veranda -- to the
empty room beside the house. Two of them, said Sarto, took turns
guarding them, while the rest broke into the house and dragged
Acan to the living room and tied him up. Then they took turns
raping his wife in the kitchen and his daughters in their
bedrooms.

The night was full with cries and tears.

The days that follow are full with anger, sympathy and
discussions about rape, who some describe as nothing but animals
with human faces.

The police have not caught anyone yet.