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Indonesia court to free teachers charged with sexually abusing students

By REUTERS

AUGUST 14, 2015 06:51

An Indonesian court will free two international school teachers who were jailed for sexually abusing students, the pair's lawyer and the brother of one the teachers said on Friday, in a case that critics say was fraught with irregularities.

"The previous verdict has been overturned by the Jakarta high court because there was no evidence of sodomy," the pair's lawyer Hotman Paris Hutapea told reporters.

Canadian teacher Neil Bantleman and Ferdinand Tjiong, a teaching assistant from Indonesia, were previously found guilty of abusing kindergarten students at the Jakarta Intercultural School.

The court in the Indonesian capital had sentenced Bantleman and Tjiong to each serve 10 years in prison and pay a fine of 100 million rupiah ($7,600).

"We are working to understand next steps to have them released in the next 12 hours," Guy Bantleman, Neil Bantleman's brother, told Reuters by email.

Indonesian authorities were not immediately available for comment.

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