Denpasar Police putting up a sketch of a man
believed to have raped as many as six young girls
The National Police said on Monday that a suspect in a string of rapes targeting schoolgirls in Bali had been arrested, but that it was unclear if he was the lone perpetrator.
“We’ve arrested a man, a community security guard,” National Police spokesman Edward Aritonang said. “He admitted to only one of the rapes and denied involvement in the other five.”
He said the suspect, identified as I Made Sumarjaya, worked as a security guard at PT Kilat Tugu Canggu. He is alleged to have raped a 13-year-old student from Sapta Andika Junior High School in Bali’s capital, Denpasar.
The incident allegedly occurred after Sumarjaya picked up the student on Jalan Subur, where she had been waiting for her parents, and took her to the Bebek Bengil motel.
“They knew each other, which made it easy for us to arrest him,” Edward said.
“We set up a special team to investigate this case. We also generated a sketch of the perpetrator and had it published in the local media.”
He added that the police had also dispatched a pediatric psychiatrist to Denpasar to counsel the victims.
The announcement of Sumarjaya’s arrest came just days after a 9-year-old girl was raped on Friday, bringing the number of victims to six.
Friday’s incident, however, differed from previous cases as the rapist attacked the girl in her own home on Jalan Pulau Moyo in Denpasar.
Each of the five schoolgirls attacked previously were abducted by a man on a motorcycle who told the victims he had been asked by their parents to pick them up.
Edward said the first five victims were abducted on their way home from school, after-school lessons or Koran recital class. The last victim was raped at home when the perpetrator entered the house pretending to be a guest of the family.
The motorcycle-riding perpetrator is believed to have a scar on the right side of his nose. Police describe him as being between 25 and 35 years of age, fair-skinned and 1.65 meters tall.
He reportedly rides a Yamaha Jupiter motorcycle and has been described as wearing a black jacket.
In response to the attacks, police have deployed two officers to patrol every elementary school in Denpasar during class hours.
The youngest of the six victims is a 7-year-old student at Monang-Maning Elementary School. She was attacked on Feb. 16 at about 5:30 p.m., when she was returning home from a Koran recital class.
