One lovely morning on 17th of April 2008, I was sitting by the pool with two friends of mine. Though the sun shone brightly and the birds chirped happily, we were involved in a deep conversation. Not long after that the intense discussion we had became more emotional as one of my mates, S – a young woman of 33 years old – just told us that she had just been raped a couple of weeks before.

She was just visiting her family in the northern part of Denpasar on Thursday, 3rd of April 2008 when she was approached by a guy who claimed to be friends with her aunt. He asked a direction to a certain place and she provided him that. The man pretended stupid and requested her to take him to that place instead. She resisted the idea in the beginning but she gave in eventually and took a ride with that guy on his motorcycle.

S said that this awful bloke drove his motorcycle to the wrong direction with a reason that he had to pick up his friends who also wanted to see the house.

Apparently they ended up in a hotel out of nowhere. It was then when S was forced to come inside the hotel room when she met the other two guys. Once inside, the three guys started to make a sexual move to her. She struggled her best to free herself, she admitted, but with one guy holding her wrists and the other her ankles, she had to lose the battle. In turn they raped her until she was left feeling very shaky, deeply humiliated and devastated.

The next four days she locked herself in her small boarding room and cried her eyes out. She did not dare to tell anyone about it because of the sole reason of the humiliation she would bring into the family. She did not tell anyone; her family, her boyfriend, or her friends, so leave alone the police. The case was left unreported, even after a heavy persuasion from me and the people who finally knew about this.

Though failing in our attempts to make her report that to the police, we managed to assure her that she definitely had to go to the hospital for a medical check. And she was only convinced after I told her that I took one of those tests, too, once.

Like her, like me, and like most of the unprotected girls all over Indonesia who are often rated second by the community, we experienced a sexual abuse at least once in our life. And I do hope the rapists and the people who blame women for the rapes to happen die in hell!