Tuesday, Nov 06, 2012
His would just be another name added to the young girl's growing circle of Facebook friends.
Except that this "friend request" was from a fiend. And it marked the beginning of a horrific week of abduction, sexual abuse and slavery.
The 14-year-old girl could not have imagined how her life would change because of one simple click.
After all she had added strangers on Facebook many times before.
So she clicked on the button and allowed a man she knew as Yogi into her life.
She thought that getting to know Yogi, 24, was the start of a simple friendship.
But that friendship ended the moment she was locked in the small room in Bogor, West Java.
About a month after meeting Yogi, the girl was kidnapped near her home in Depok, on the outskirts of Jakarta,and raped repeatedly.
The girl's abduction remains one of the rare documented cases of human trafficking in Indonesia with social media being used to lure unsuspecting girls, said the head of a non-governmental organisation.
The tall girl with shoulder-length black hair had started that fateful Sunday like any other weekend.
She had attended Sunday school on Sept 23 and was on her way to choir practice. She told her mother she was also going to meet a sick friend.
But she made a slight detour - to meet Yogi. He was waiting near her home.
She agreed to get into his minivan for what she thought was a joy ride.
Says the girl: "He wanted to buy new clothes for me, and help with school payments. He was different... That's all."
It all began innocently.
From chatting online, they had progressed to SMS texting. She felt she could trust him.
Their first meeting was pleasant.
He was charming and knew how to impress the teenager.
Adds the girl: "I have a lot of contacts through Facebook, and I've also exchanged phone numbers. Everything has always gone fine. We were just friends."
Getting into Yogi's minivan was the beginning of her nightmare. She was drugged and was "mostly unconscious" after that.
And she wasn't alone.
Five other girls were held captive in a small room, in Bogor, an hour's drive from Depok.
Like the 14-year-old, they, too, were scared, and dazed from being fed sleeping pills.
She told the Associated Press (AP) in a report which appeared last week: "I am angry and cannot accept what he did to me. I was raped and beaten!" The Depok girl lost her virginity in the first violent assault.
Yogi wasn't the only person "having a go" at the girls. "I saw they were offered by my kidnapper to many guys," says the Depok girl.
"I don't know what happened. I don't want to remember it."
Bruised and battered, she begged to be returned home.
Instead, Yogi responded by more beatings, telling her to "shut up or die".
She was also too drowsy to think of escape. Another girl and a man had kept watch over the traumatised victims.
The New Paper on Sunday understands that the girl was about to be "shipped to Batam" - a known transit point for human traffickers.
Yogi had told her that she would be flown to the Indonesian island, just 45 minutes from Singapore by ferry.
There, she would have faced greater horrors because she would have been sold to brothels or sex farms in Batam.
Fortunately, her captors couldn't carry out their plan. They didn't have the money for a plane ticket to Batam, she explained to AP.
Yogi was also aware that her parents and others were relentless in their search for her.
About a week later, Yogi dumped her at a bus station about a 30-minute drive from Depok.
She found help and was reunited with her family.
Yogi remains at large and the fate of the other five girls remains uncertain
The mother bore a heavy heart as she tossed and turned in bed.
Madam Rauden, mother of the missing 14-year-old girl, kept thinking about her daughter.
"Where could she be?"
That is what the 39-year-old woman had asked one of her daughter's friends.
The teen was supposed to return home after choir practice.
Every Sunday, it was routine for her to return before 9pm.
But she didn't come home the night of Sept 23.
The girl's mother tells The New Paper on Sunday in a telephone interview: "My heart sank when my daughter's friend said she wasn't with her.
"The stress and worry kept me awake the whole night."
Did she run away? Or did something bad happen to the eldest of her three children?
The more she thought about it, the more questions she had.
"It just wasn't in my daughter's character to disappear like that," says the woman who works as a cook's assistant.
"She's a responsible girl."
The next day Madam Rauden and her husband went to the police station to file a missing person's report.
She also reported the disappearance to her daughter's school in Depok.
Officers from the National Commission for Child Protection visited Madam Rauden's home to make enquiries three days later.
But nobody had answers for the worried family.
Then, a glimmer of hope.
"One of my daughter's schoolmates gave information that she could be at a bus station nearby.
We rallied my nephews, relatives and friends to help search for my daughter."
They searched the area and asked people at the bus station if they had seen the lanky teenager.
No such luck.
"In those desperate times, I kept praying that maybe she was still alive and okay," says Madam Rauden.
"I kept hoping and hoping because that was the only thing that made me sane."
Little did Madam Rauden know that her daughter was being held against her will, an hour away from Depok.
Waiting for tiny morsels of news felt like an eternity.
The family rushed to answer every telephone call or knock at the door.
She had expected to hear at least some news about her missing daughter, yet none arrived.
The mother learnt the harsh truth only when she was reunited with her daughter about a week later.
The so-called "friend" - the monster who had drugged and repeatedly raped the teenage girl - had dumped her at a bus station.
There, she found help and was driven home.
"When I opened the door, I almost didn't recognise the girl standing there," adds Madam Rauden.
Her face and clothes were dirty, her fair skin was greasy and her hair was badly matted.
She also had bruises on her knees and hands.
Says Madam Rauden: "At last, it was my daughter.
Both of us stood there crying and hugging each other. I didn't want to let go. I was overjoyed that she had returned safely."
Madam Rauden declined to allow this reporter to speak to her daughter, fearing it would trigger bitter memories.
Scarred physically and emotionally, the girl longed for her life to be back to normal. That would mean catching up with friends and going to school.
But it was not to be. She was expelled from school.
School officials reportedly claimed she had tarnished its image.
The action by the school caused outrage, eventually leading to reports about her trauma.
She has now been enrolled in a new school, her mother tells TNPS.
Madam Rauden learned that her daughter was lured, baited and eventually, kidnapped by the man using social media.
When asked if she knew anything about her daughter's online friends, Madam Rauden says: "What's Facebook? I don't understand how you can make friends staring at a computer screen...when you don't meet or speak to a friend face to face.
"This is where my generation differs from my daughter's (generation)."
Even though the girl is now safely home, Madam Rauden says her daughter remains fearful. Her tormentor remains at large.
Would she be sought again by her kidnapper?
Madam Rauden adds: "She is a brave girl to have survived the ordeal. But she is afraid that he (her abductor) will return."
