I tend to go down rabbit holes on the internet. You know how it works. You open your phone to check one thing, come across a news headline, click a link, read the comments, and suddenly you’ve spent forty minutes learning stuff you’d rather not know.

Sporadically, it’s a dispute about a famous person, another politician who says incredibly foolish things, and a story about a child being sexually molested by someone who was meant to protect them that can be found tucked away between political drama, celebrity rumors, and the typical online circus.

The frequency of these stories is not the only thing that worries me about them. It’s the strange way we react. We get angry (at least momentarily), want to be punished, discuss the headline, debate the perpetrator, and maybe provide some caustic comments about the nation’s establishments. Subsequently, a new scandal emerges, the algorithm discovers more glamorous things, and the earlier story subtly vanishes into the digital graveyard of yesterday’s indignation.

What happens to the child, though?

I want to start with that (not with the dramatic specifics of crimes, and most definitely not with an effort to use the misery of others as a source of intellectual amusement). The connection between child sexual abuse, institutional authority, social inequality, celebrity culture, public morality, and political power in Indonesia is my area of interest.

The Quiet Part’s video essay, American Pedopolitics: 250 Years of Child Abuse and Exploitation – An Academic Review, apportioned as the source of inspiration for this, because it looked at child abuse and exploitation as phenomena ingrained in a nation’s larger historical, political, economic, and institutional structures, I found its methodology intriguing, to think about the systems, hierarchies, and arrangements that surround each event.

That made me think: what would be an equivalent examination if we applied it to Indonesia?

Indonesia is obviously not the U.S. Colonial history, religious institutions, political development, class structures, legal system, and cultural landscape differ. Mechanically, I am not interested in transferring an American analysis to an Indonesian context and pretending the two countries are interchangeable, but it is worth borrowing the broader question of analysis. What does the history of child sexual abuse and exploitation tell us if we look at it through the lens of political power, and what patterns emerge when we put religious institutions, educational environments, entertainment industries, tourism, digital platforms, families and the state into conversation with one another?

I want to call this relationship “Indonesian pedopolitics,” which originates from The Quiet Part’s video essay, but the framework I build here is my own attempt to apply that to the historical and sociopolitical circumstances of Indonesia.

I’m using the term as an analytical concept, not as if it were a branch of political science or an academic discipline, nor am I claiming that all Indonesian political figures are secretly sexual predators. That would be a conspiracy theory of irresponsibility, not critical analysis. What I mean is the politics of childhood: who controls children’s bodies, who speaks for children, whose suffering is taken seriously, what institutions are held responsible, and why some kinds of abuse become public scandals, and others remain virtually invisible.

Simple enough, in Indonesia, child sexual abuse cannot be understood as a set of individual criminal acts. It must also be seen as a problem of power. The perpetrator matters, of course, but so does the family that refuses to believe the child, the school that protects its reputation, the religious institution that treats criticism as an attack, the entertainment industry that commercializes childhood, the digital platform that profits from attention, and the public that is consistently more interested in debating the morality of a victim.

Therefore, in addition to who is doing the abuse, the problem is the social and institutional context that enables abuse to occur, to persist, or that makes accountability difficult.

Michel Foucault is among those intellectuals whose name pops up in discussions where participants aren’t certain of his actual statements. Bring up “biopolitics” during a social gathering, and you might encounter looks typically given to someone declaring they’ve been involved in a pyramid scheme.

In The History of Sexuality, Foucault explored the transformation of sexuality into a subject of understanding, governance, categorization, and oversight. According to his perspective, power functions through common actions, professional expertise, organizations, social norms, and the prevailing concepts of what is deemed normal or abnormal. By forbidding actions, power generates classifications, identities, guidelines, and frameworks for self-perception.

When we focus on early development, children are intermittently instructed regarding who they ought to be, the manner in which they should conduct themselves, the knowledge they should acquire, and the information they ought to avoid. Families, schools, religious institutions, state authorities, and the media are all involved in shaping the so-called acceptable circumstances of being a child. Discussions revolve around purity, compliance, self-control, decorum, learning, and safety.

None are fundamentally negative. Children need protection, boundaries, and adults who take charge of their well-being. Issues arise when the rhetoric of safety is used to rationalize the regulation of children, while allowing adult power to remain unchallenged.

Think about the common perspective that a teacher, religious leader, or esteemed community member should have more knowledge than a child. This appears logical until the authoritative individual turns out to be the one inflicting harm. At that point, the very power dynamics intended to protect the child transform into a barrier against sharing the truth. The child finds themselves pressured to comply, stay respectful, prevent family shame, and potentially excuse the actions of the wrongdoer.

Through Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power, organizations can cultivate practices of compliance, quietness, and self-control. A child who understands that questioning an adult is impolite might find it difficult to acknowledge when an adult’s behavior is harmful, much less disclose it.

Automatically, the issue is not that religious schools, pesantren, or other educational organizations are harmful. Such would be an oversimplified assumption. Most people in these institutions do not exploit children, and many provide essential care and education. However, institutional respectability must never excuse a failure to accept responsibility. The qualifications of a teacher, the esteem of a religious leader, or the reputation of a school cannot replace the need for external oversight.

Providing additional insight into the matter, Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of symbolic power explains the ways in which authority is acknowledged and embraced by society. Certain individuals are afforded trustworthiness even before they speak. A well-regarded teacher, affluent employer, celebrity, religious figure, or an outsider may have social and cultural assets that lend their narrative credibility compared to that of a child lacking social sway.

Think about the disparity. On one hand, you have an adult who holds a professional designation, a public image, possesses wealth, has social connections, or benefits from institutional protection. Conversely, there is a child who relies on adults for necessities such as food, housing, education, affection, and safety. Altogether, these exist in distinct roles.

Behind the complexities of consent when children are part of the equation, a child might seem agreeable, loving, or acutely connected to an adult engaged in grooming. However, this does not eliminate the existing disparity. Specifically, grooming is the method by which trust, dependence, secrecy, and coercion can be developed. The child might lack the awareness or autonomy needed to grasp the situation.

The memoir Broken Strings: Fragments of Stolen Youth by Aurélie Moeremans brought the issue of child grooming into wider Indonesian public discourse in early 2026, following its initial digital release in October 2025. Her account recounts her experiences of grooming during adolescence, illustrating the difficulty of recognizing manipulation while it is happening, particularly when abusive behaviour is disguised as affection, attention, or attachment.

The public response demonstrated how an individual survivor’s testimony can expose forms of abuse that remain poorly understood, socially normalized, or insufficiently recognized. More importantly, the discussion surrounding the memoir highlighted the importance of listening to survivors without resorting to victim-blaming.

What captivates my interest here is the potential for a survivor’s account to redefine the vocabulary that society uses to comprehend it. At times, individuals may not grasp what has occurred to them until many years later, once they have found the language to articulate it.

Consistently, abuse does not take on the extreme form of a stranger assaulting a child in a dimly lit street. At times, it may appear as affection, guidance, gifts, opportunities, bonds, or a connection that those surrounding the child view as innocuous.

It appears as if an establishment is maintaining that nothing occurred.

According to Jennifer Freyd, institutional betrayal happens when a group that individuals rely on does not stop harm from happening, responds poorly to allegations, or prioritizes its interests over the welfare of those it is intended to assist. It can become involved through passivity, threats, concealment, or choosing not to look into the matter.

Picture a child disclosing abuse at school. The immediate reaction of the school should focus on safeguarding the student, preserving evidence, offering appropriate assistance, and contacting the authorities. However, what occurs if the concern is the reputation of the school? What if the officials start to deliberate on how the claim could affect enrollment, relationships with donors, or the public perception of the institution? Confidentiality: what happens if the family is urged to resolve the issue?

Now, the institution has shifted from being a haven for safety to yet another obstacle that the child has to overcome.

To be analyzed not through the lens of legal liability, it is also essential to explore what transpired prior to the report of the abuse, what took place following the disclosure, who was aware of it, who possessed the authority to intervene, and the reasons why action was either taken or not taken.

Regardless, the current issues regarding child protection in Indonesia did not arise in isolation, and the country has undergone swift transformations, urbanization, the rise of media sectors, shifts in family dynamics, and a commodification of entertainment. Concurrently, traditional systems of age, gender, class, and power have not vanished.

The outcome is a disconcerting blend of modern technology and longstanding power relations, in which a child may have a smartphone, access worldwide entertainment, and engage in universal digital culture, yet be reliant on adults who oversee their finances, learning, movement, and interactions.

In 2025, former performers of the Oriental Circus Indonesia (OCI) reignited public discussions surrounding allegations of exploitation and maltreatment dating back to the 1970s, describing various forms of abuse, including physical violence, the denial of formal education, and the economic exploitation of children recruited as circus performers. Notably, the case had already come to the attention of Komnas HAM in 1997, which identified several suspected human rights violations and issued recommendations that were reportedly never adequately implemented.

Although the police investigation was discontinued in 1999, it remained without an adequate resolution for decades. Although these allegations should not be mistaken for judicially established conclusions, how could such serious allegations remain unresolved for so long, particularly when the individuals affected were children?

About the commercial industry, we love childhood when it is profitable, talented child singers, actors, performers, and influencers, and celebrate their precociousness, market their personalities, and praise their ability to behave like miniature, yet the moment they require the protections that children are entitled to, the industry can become less enthusiastic.

The case of Tegar Septian, who publicly alleged sexual abuse by his former manager during his career, raises questions about the vulnerability of young performers and the adults entrusted with managing their professional lives. In Tegar’s case, reports described allegations that his manager restricted his communication with his family and music label while accompanying him on overseas tours.

A child performer may depend on a manager for transportation, accommodation, communication, and access to necessities. Under certain circumstances, it can develop into a structure of dependency, in which the person responsible for facilitating a child’s career also possesses considerable influence over the child’s life and security.

From circus workers to television personalities, we generally discuss their success without examining the conditions under which that success was produced. Who controlled their earnings, decided their working hours, protected their education, and ensured that the adults surrounding them were trustworthy?

Through the same social category, we should also resist the temptation to interpret every case. The experiences of children living on the street, children from economically disadvantaged families, children in celebrity households, and children attending prestigious institutions are not identical. Considerably, they may share an experience of vulnerability, but the mechanisms producing that vulnerability can differ.

According to Kimberlé Crenshaw (originally developed to explain how different forms of social inequality overlap), intersectionality encourages us to examine how age, gender, class, and other social positions interact.

Children living on the streets, in wealthy households, celebrity environments, or religious boarding schools may face distinct vulnerabilities arising from unstable living conditions, household abuse, limited professional autonomy, or dependence on institutional authority.

Equally, vulnerability is not distributed, nor does it look the way we expect.

Judith Butler asks us to consider why some are recognized as vulnerable and worthy of protection while others are treated as less visible or less valuable. In the Indonesian context, we might ask which children receive public sympathy and which are forgotten.

Differently, do we respond when the victim is a celebrity’s child? Does a child from a respectable family receive more immediate credibility? Sufficiently, does the public pay attention to a victim only when the case becomes sensational?

These are about the unequal distribution of attention, credibility, and protection.

Also known as Babe, the cases involving Baekuni and the sexual exploitation of children around Jakarta Kota Station illustrate the circumstances of children living in precarious conditions. The danger here is not to suggest that poverty causes sexual violence. It does not. Most economically disadvantaged people are not perpetrators, and poverty should never be treated as a defect.

Material insecurity can increase a child’s dependence on adults for necessities, shelter, and protection, while limiting access to education and legal assistance, creating opportunities for exploitation and making it more difficult for children to recognize abuse, seek help, or escape abusive situations.

In Johan Galtung’s idea of structural violence, structural violence denotes damage generated or maintained by social systems that systematically hinder individuals from fulfilling their needs or gaining access to opportunities. While it doesn’t have to be just one individual assaulting another, it may encompass the effects of systemic neglect, disparity, and insufficient protection.

Frequently, we talk about online exploitation as if it were an entirely new occurrence and sexual predators all of a sudden emerged with the creation of WhatsApp. Obviously, that is nonsense. Long before the advent of smartphones, abuse existed. Technology alters the speed, scale, availability, and permanence of exploitation.

Without entering the child’s neighborhood, a perpetrator can establish contact with a child. They can manipulate, threaten, blackmail, or distribute sexual images through a device that the child uses for schoolwork and entertainment, making the physical and digital spaces progressively difficult to maintain.

Based on the Disrupting Harm in Indonesia report, jointly produced by ECPAT International, INTERPOL, and UNICEF Office of Research–Innocenti of online child sexual exploitation and abuse (OCSEA) conducted between November 2020 and February 2021, approximately 2% of internet-using children aged 12–17 reported experiencing specific forms of online sexual exploitation and abuse during the preceding year, including sexual extortion, the non-consensual sharing of sexual images, and coercion into sexual activities through promises of money or gifts. In Indonesia, the report estimated that this represented approximately 500,000 children.

The report also found that between 17% and 56% of children experiencing different forms of online sexual exploitation, abuse, or other unwanted online experiences did not disclose them to anyone. Although they should be interpreted within the limitations of the study’s methodology, the sensitivity of the subject matter, and its one-year reporting period, these findings are alarming.

UNICEF’s later evaluation of Indonesia’s online child-protection programme reported that 99.4% of Indonesian children used the internet and spent an average of 5.4 hours online daily and reiterated the estimate that approximately 2% of internet-using children had experienced online child sexual exploitation and abuse in the preceding year. The important point is that children’s digital lives have expanded faster than the systems designed to protect them.

We cannot solve this by honestly telling children not to use social media. That would be like responding to road accidents by telling children never to leave the house. Digital technology is part of life, and children use it to communicate, learn, create, and participate in culture. For safety, the responsibility cannot be transferred onto them.

Parents need better resources, schools need meaningful digital-safety education, platforms need stronger detection and reporting systems, law enforcement needs the technical capacity to investigate online exploitation, and children need to know that asking for help will not automatically result in punishment, humiliation, or the confiscation of their existence.

If children believe that reporting abuse will get them into trouble, they are less likely to report it. The UNICEF findings indicate that shame, fear of consequences, uncertainty about where to seek help, and concern about causing family problems can contribute to silence. We should stop treating disclosure as a matter of courage. Sometimes, the social environment makes speaking up difficult.

At this point, someone might reasonably ask whether we are turning every child-protection issue into a discussion of power. Is it possible that we are overcomplicating something that should be straightforward? A person commits a crime, the authorities investigate, and the perpetrator is punished. Why not leave it at that?

Simply put, punishment alone does not explain why the same institutional failures keep appearing.

While leaving the conditions that enabled the abuse untouched, it is possible to prosecute an offender. A school can dismiss one teacher without improving its reporting procedures, a family can remove one perpetrator without learning to recognize grooming, a media company can distance itself from one scandal while continuing to treat child performers as commercial assets, and a government can announce a new campaign without providing sufficient funding for victim support.

Although legal accountability is essential, it does not translate into institutional transformation.

Indonesia has made important legal developments, particularly through Law No. 12 of 2022 on Sexual Violence Crimes, which establishes measures to prevent and address sexual violence, protect victims, and ensure their recovery. Notably, Article 14 recognizes electronic-based sexual violence, providing legal grounds to address certain forms of sexual abuse involving digital technologies, because it expands the vocabulary, provisions, and mechanisms available to address sexual violence. Yet legislation is only as effective as its implementation. Adequately, a law cannot protect a child if reporting mechanisms are inaccessible, investigations are inadequate, or survivors cannot obtain appropriate protection, assistance, and services.

In 2024, the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection’s SIMFONI PPA system recorded 19,628 cases of violence against children, compared with 11,264 in 2020, involving 21,648 and 12,410 child victims, respectively. These figures represent cases documented by protection services, not the total number of incidents occurring throughout the country. An increase in recorded cases may reflect rising violence, improved awareness, willingness to report abuse, expanded access to services, or a combination of these. Therefore, we should avoid automatically interpreting every increase in reported cases as proof that the prevalence of abuse has increased.

Meanwhile, the 2024 National Survey on the Life Experiences of Children and Adolescents (SNPHAR) estimated that 51.78% of girls and 49.83% of boys aged 13–17 had experienced at least one form of violence during their lifetime. Nevertheless, they should make it difficult to dismiss child protection as a marginal issue.

The numbers represent children whose experiences may never become news stories, whose names may never trend on social media, and whose families may never receive assistance.

If Foucault helps us understand institutional power, Stuart Hall helps us understand how public narratives are constructed. Hall argues that representation produces meaning through language, images, categories, and cultural conventions. The media influences how we understand what happened.

In 2016, Saipul Jamil was convicted of sexually molesting a 17-year-old male fan and sentenced to three years in prison, a sentence increased to five years on appeal. In 2017, he received a separate three-year sentence for bribery connected to the proceedings in his sexual-abuse case. His release in September 2021 and subsequent return to television, including an appearance on a variety programme the following day, prompted widespread public criticism. The controversy raised questions about rehabilitation, accountability, and the industry’s willingness to welcome a convicted sexual offender back into public life, particularly when such a return appears to celebrate.

Why did the case become such a spectacle, with discussions sometimes drifting away from the abuse toward the perpetrator’s sexuality and opportunities for public commentary to stigmatize homosexuality?

To be precise, child sexual abuse is not equivalent to homosexuality. Sexual orientation does not explain or excuse the abuse of a child. The issue is the exploitation of a minor by an adult, not the gender of the people involved. Conflating these redirects public attention toward an unrelated prejudice.

In Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Stanley Cohen (1972) examines how media and public discourse can construct certain individuals or groups as symbols of broader social anxieties. A problem may be attached to a much larger narrative, sometimes at the expense of understanding the harm.

In Indonesia, child sexual abuse can be entangled with debates about pornography, homosexuality, religious morality, Western cultural influence, sex education, and social media. These become dangerous when the child disappears from the conversation.

The public may spend more time arguing about whether a perpetrator represents the decline of traditional values than asking whether the victim has received support, assistance, and protection from further harm.

That is an extraordinary achievement for a society that claims to care so much about children, that we can turn the abuse of a child into a debate about almost anything except the child.

On the other hand, celebrity culture complicates accountability. A public figure’s reputation can become a form of symbolic capital. People may defend a celebrity because they enjoy their work, identify with their public persona, or dislike the idea of someone they admire being associated with a serious crime. Conversely, a celebrity may be treated as irredeemable entertainment content, with the victim’s experience reduced to a footnote in a never-ending discussion about the offender’s career.

Neither is helpful. We need to be able to distinguish legal accountability, public criticism, rehabilitation, and the rights of victims without turning any of them into a popularity contest.

However, this concept must be balanced against the risk of normalizing abuse. Not every public reaction is excessive. Some outrage is justified. The problem is selective outrage, especially when it is more interested in symbolic enemies.

So, what should be done?

First, child protection must be treated as an institutional responsibility. Schools, pesantren, sports organizations, entertainment companies, religious institutions, and residential facilities should have clear safeguarding procedures, independent complaint mechanisms, and transparent responses to allegations. Their reputations should never take priority over children’s safety.

Second, reporting must be safer and more accessible. Children need confidential channels, trained professionals, and protection against retaliation. Families need guidance on how to respond to disclosures without blaming or intimidating the child. The first response should not be, “Why didn’t you tell us earlier?” It should be, “I believe you. You are not responsible for what happened. Let’s make sure you are safe.”

Third, online protection must move beyond the familiar ritual of telling children to be careful. Digital platforms should be held accountable for the systems they operate, including the handling of exploitative content, reporting procedures, and cooperation with legitimate investigations. Digital literacy should include practical education about manipulation, grooming, coercion, and sextortion.

Fourth, support for survivors must continue long after a case disappears from the headlines. Legal proceedings can take years. Psychological recovery does not follow a convenient news cycle. Survivors may need counselling, educational assistance, legal representation, financial support, and protection from public harassment. A conviction is important, but it does not restore what was taken from someone.

Finally, we need to change the way we talk about children. They are people with rights, needs, and voices. Protecting them should not depend on whether their family is influential, whether their story attracts public attention, or whether their suffering fits an existing political agenda.

Childhood is always treated as something adults own, manage, and interpret. Adults decide what children should know, what they should say, where they should go, and whom they should trust, yet children are individuals whose vulnerability creates obligations for adults, not privileges for adults.

The term “pedopolitics” forces us to look beyond the perpetrator and examine the structures surrounding the crime, to consider how authority operates, how inequality shapes vulnerability, how media constructs public sympathy, and how institutions protect their legitimacy. The politics of childhood is not confined to parliament or government offices. It happens in classrooms, bedrooms, religious schools, entertainment agencies, police stations, family gatherings, and comment sections.

I do not think every case in Indonesia can be explained by one theory. Foucault cannot tell us everything about an individual offender. Bourdieu cannot explain every family decision. Butler cannot replace criminal investigation. Cohen cannot tell us whether a particular allegation is true. These theories are tools for asking better questions.

Likewise, we should not assume that every allegation is a conviction, that every institution is guilty, or that every perpetrator has a diagnosis of pedophilia. Child sexual abuse and exploitation encompass different behaviors, motivations, and circumstances. Accurately, distinctions are necessary if we want to understand it.

What I am arguing is that Indonesia needs a culture of accountability that does not disappear when the trending topic changes, institutions that can investigate themselves without being trusted to do so exclusively, laws that are implemented, media that can report abuse without turning victims into spectacles, and a public willing to question authority, even when that authority comes wrapped in religious respectability, celebrity status, professional credentials, or family prestige.

There is a familiar phrase that children are the future of the nation. It features prominently in speeches, campaigns, slogans, and national celebrations, sounding both inspiring and convenient. The future is always somewhere ahead of us, while the children who need protection are standing right here, in the present.

If we genuinely believe children are the future, we should probably stop treating their safety as an optional administrative concern.

The available evidence makes it impossible to treat the issue as marginal. The more difficult question is whether Indonesia is willing to confront the systems of authority, inequality, silence, and indifference that allow the problem to persist.

Protecting children should not be a matter of protecting the people who claim to speak on their behalf.

If that sounds like a political statement, good. It is supposed to be.

References

  • Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power (J. B. Thompson, Ed.; G. Raymond & M. Adamson, Trans.). Harvard University Press.
  • Butler, J. (2004). Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. Verso.
  • Cohen, S. (1972). Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. MacGibbon and Kee.
  • Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.
  • ECPAT International, INTERPOL, & UNICEF. (2022). Disrupting Harm in Indonesia: Evidence on Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children.
  • Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality: Volume 1, An Introduction (R. Hurley, Trans.). Pantheon Books. (Original work published 1976)
  • Freyd, J. J., & Smith, C. P. (2014). Institutional Betrayal. American Psychologist, 69(6), 575–587.
  • Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191.
  • Hall, S. (Ed.). (1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. SAGE Publications.
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  • Republic of Indonesia. (2022). Undang-Undang Republik Indonesia Nomor 12 Tahun 2022 tentang Tindak Pidana Kekerasan Seksual [Law of the Republic of Indonesia Number 12 of 2022 concerning Sexual Violence Crimes].
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  • Smith, C. P., & Freyd, J. J. (2014). Institutional Betrayal. American Psychologist, 69(6), 575–587.
  • The Quiet Part. (2026). American Pedopolitics: 250 Years of Child Abuse and Exploitation – An Academic Review [Video essay].
  • UNICEF Indonesia. (2026). Evaluation of the Programme to Prevent and Respond to Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse: Insights and Lessons Learned to Strengthen Child Online Protection. UNICEF Indonesia.
  • United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. (2025). Concluding Observations on the Combined Sixth and Seventh Periodic Reports of Indonesia.
  • Yuniar, R. W. (2026). Indonesian Actress Opens Up about Grooming, ‘Fake’ Marriage in Viral Memoir Broken Strings. South China Morning Post.