Romantic Relationship Between Adults And Minors Can't Be Labeled Likes, It's Child Grooming

A number of activists expressed their aspirations for the peaceful demonstration to commemorate National Education Day (Hardiknas) at the intersection of five, Gorontalo City, Gorontalo, Thursday (2/5/2024). (ANTARA/Adiwinata Solihin)

JAKARTA The immoral video between teachers and students in Gorontalo which went viral on social media has shocked the public. This video is often associated with the term Child Grooming. And, clinical psychologist Kasandra Putranto said, it was time for Indonesia to add legal sanctions to groundbreaking behavior to protect Indonesian children.

A teacher with the initials DH at a religious educational institution in Gorontalo Regency, Gorontalo Province, is suspected of committing immoral acts against a female student who is still in 12th grade.

The incident was revealed after a video recording the alleged immoral act of the 57-year-old teacher circulated widely on social media. The inequality of power relations between teachers and students makes immoral cases in the educational environment often occur.

According to the Federation of Indonesian Teachers' Unions or FSGI, there were at least 101 victims of sexual violence in educational units from January to August 2024. Meanwhile, from January to May 2023, FSGI recorded 22 cases of sexual violence with the number of victims reaching 202 children in the educational environment.

Of these hundreds of cases, among the perpetrators were teachers, leaders of Islamic boarding schools, and teachers. Seeing a number of cases where the perpetrators were educators, the victims were often helpless due to inequality in power relations.

Kasus yang terjadi di Gorontalo membuat publik kembali diharapkan aware denganchild grooming. Secara umum,child grooming adalah teknik mengumilikan pemikiran anak untuk tujuan tertentu. Umumnya, tujuan yang paling sering dari teknik ini adalah untuk pemilihan dan pelecehan seksual.

Clinical and forensic psychologist Kasandra Putranto defined rooming as an initial process of sexual exploitation and violence, covering various attempts to build relationships, trust, and emotional relationships with a child or teenager so that they can manipulate, exploit, and harass them, even to acts of human trafficking.

Kasandra emphasized that anyone can become aangrooming orangroomer, regardless of age, gender, or race. In some countries, rooming already contains its own legal sanctions even though exploitation or sexual violence has not occurred.

Phenomenonchild grooming is rife in the past few years, especially in education units. Spatting victims often become bound and find it difficult to escape due to various emotional, financial bonds, and threats that make them even more deeply entangled in toxic relationships with perpetrators. Therefore, Kasandra hopes that the opening perpetrators will receive severe punishment.

"It's time for the Indonesian state to consider adding legal sanctions to the behavior of groundbreaking in order to protect Indonesian children," he said.

The same thing was also expressed by psychologist Liza Marielly Djapprie, who explained that child groundbreaking is a condition in which adults slowly initiate relationships such as adult relationships with victims who are underage, namely children or adolescents until the age of 16. In contrast to sexual violence that tends to hurt victims, child groundbreaking is actually carried out more smoothly.

"This is usually done slowly, not hurt. The way is by manipulating children's way of thinking and of course underage teenagers who are not mature," said Liza.

Given the high number of cases of sexual violence in educational units, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (Kemendikbudristek) issued Permendikbudristek Number 30 of 2021 concerning the Prevention and Handling of Sexual Violence in Higher Education (PPKS) and the Permendikbudristek for the Prevention and Handling of Violence in the Education Unit (PPKSP).

However, these regulations do not necessarily stop sexual violence in educational units. To prevent this from happening, it is not only schoolwork but also requires the role of all parties, especially parents, as revealed by Liza Marielly Djaprie.

Liza said children should receive sex education from an early age, so they can know which parts to touch or not. Unfortunately, what still happens among parents, said Liza, considers the physical touch of adults towards children to be normal.

The crowd must be trained from an early age, which ones are allowed and should not be touched by others. So if for example the child feels uncomfortable being touched by other people, that's okay. If you have been trained since childhood, children can understand which ones can't be touched," said Liza.

Furthermore, Liza explained that one of the reasons that made children easy to become victims of rooming was due to a vacancy in themselves. In the case that occurred in Gorontalo, the victim is said to no longer have parents or orphans. The absence of the role of the parent who should be a protector is considered by Liza to be one of the reasons why victims are easily persuaded by the perpetrators.

The perpetrator tried to approach by filling the vacancy of the victim. It could be empty because of the absence of a parent figure or being ostracized. The perpetrator usually looks for this empty victim and then takes an approach, "explained Liza.

"Usually this approach process has stages, starting with paying attention, then small gifts so that the victim feels honored. If there is no rejection, it will continue to be added again," he added.

Furthermore, Liza also straightened out that like-to-like labels cannot be given in romantic relationships between adults and minors, as narrated in the case of teacher and student relationships in Gorontalo.

This is because minors are biologically unable to have the same brain maturity as adults. Liza explained that children below the general development of their frontal lobes are not mature, so they are considered unable to psychologically and have experience in making more mature decisions.

In general, to make wise choices, it only develops at the age of 18 years and over. This condition eventually makes minors considered unable to provide an ideal consent.

"This is a wrong concept and must be justified. The culture, the habit of thinking patterns like this cause child grooming, and sexual harassment to become rampant," he said.