Suspected prostitutes caught in sweep of Bogor malls, park

BOGOR (JP): A joint team of mayoralty officials and councilors netted nine women, aged from 17 to 22, who were suspected of soliciting at two shopping malls and a recreation park on Saturday evening.

Code-named Rayu, which is Indonesian for seduction, the raid was planned and conducted carefully in a bid to avoid the possibility of suspects suing the police for wrongful arrest. It was led by the head of Bogor mayoralty's social and political affairs office, E. Rukanda.

The team was careful to arrest the suspects in the presence of witnesses, Dadang Sugiarta, a senior official of the office, said on Sunday.

The women were still being questioned at the mayoralty's administrative office to determine why they were engaged in prostitution, he said.

"If they have economic reasons, they will be sent to the Paliman rehabilitation center in Cirebon (West Java) to learn a skill. But if it's due to their mentality, they will have to enter the pesantren (Islamic boarding school)," Dadang said.

"With a weak will, they would be easily tempted by an offer of only Rp 1 million."

Head of the office's security section Otib Malik threatened to also summon parents of the women for questioning if they were arrested again. He believed parental neglect might have led the women to experiment with prostitution.

"Some parents are often diffident about their children. For instance, they don't care if their girls have not come home in the middle of the night ... but they would do all they could to find a missing chicken."

He said the administration decided it should be open with the public about its efforts to fight prostitution.

"Such bad things don't need to be hidden," he said.

The office identified the women as Diah, Novi, Lia, Indri, Wiwi and four sisters: Juwita Prihantini, Rahma Yulia, Dewi Rulianti and Lina Novalina.

Diah, 22, the second wife of a local health agency official, was netted at Jambu Dua shopping mall by undercover team members posing as customers.

The mother of a five-year-old boy was arrested shortly after accepting the plainclothes officers' offer of Rp 300,000 to go to a local hotel.

The sisters, one of whom claimed to be a student of Pakuan University and another who said she was a high school student at SMU Pembangunan, offered their services for Rp 1 million each, officials said.

They were arrested in the Mawar shopping mall.

The remaining four suspects were apprehended by the joint team members near Topi recreation park.

The women told reporters they were victims of entrapment.

"I admit that I was a bad girl in the past. But I stopped doing bad things after I married for a second time," Diah said.

She said she went to the mall with her sister to buy a shirt for her child when they met the undercover police officers.

Diah said she was initially happy to accept the offer of Rp 300,000 to spend "leisure time" at the hotel since she and her sister only had Rp 1,000 left.

Local officials have stepped up raids against prostitutes, including in known hangouts of malls and parks, following demands by university students for a halt to the sex business in the mayoralty. (21/bsr)