Law and conscience

The Jakarta metropolitan police deserve honors for arresting a gang of brutal rapists in a village near Bekasi, 20 kilometers southeast of here, on Wednesday. The 10 young men will face charges of robbery and raping a housewife and her two underage daughters after tying up the father in the same house.

If hearing is believing, the police this time have worked professionally, without trying to extract confessions by illegal means. Instead, good detective work and modern laboratory technology were fully utilized. The 100-member police team working on the case labored day and night until results were obtained. The suspects were released soon after they were taken into custody, but were arrested again later after the officers had acquired enough evidence to support the charges.

The robbery and gang rape in Bekasi have sent shock waves through many parts of this country. President Soeharto, shocked to hear of the increase in the rate of brutal crimes, has urged the authorities to put a stop to the trend. People from all walks of life have condemned the rapists and expressed sympathy for the family. Oddly, nothing has been heard from any of our women's organizations.

Sadly, additional rape cases have already been reported since the Bekasi tragedy, a sign that rapists do not feel threatened by the existing law and much less by the public's anger. The problem, then, is how to curb the apparently rising tide of barbarism. Minister of Women's Roles Mien Sugandhi said last week that rapists deserved the death penalty and experts have written articles discussing this most loathsome attack on women from various points of view. Jurists have reminded the nation that our law on rape needs to be revamped to include a suitable minimum jail term for rapists.

Fury and rage, however, will not solve this social problem. Judges also need to be awakened to the gravity of rape, whose victims and their families can be traumatized for life. Despite the age of the victims or the brutality of the rape, judges have rarely, if ever, handed down the maximum 12-year prison sentence for rape.

In the past, court verdicts were typically not criticized by the public. After all, judges are free within the boundaries of the law to use their good sense. Now, however, what if this runs against the public's sense of justice? As things stand at present, nobody seems to have the authority to answer this question.

Common sense, however, rules that even a judge's conscience must have an acceptable standard. So, as many people see it, judges must not be too lenient and hand down sentences that perhaps nobody but themselves can understand.