0 Public needs marriage education

Following two high-profile cases of adult men carrying out sexual relationships with underage girls in Bangli, several local figures have asked the local administration to educate the public on sex abuse, polygamy and the ideal age for marriage. Bangli is one of the poorest regencies in Bali, with a significant number of children dropping out of school to work as laborers to help their cash-stripped families. 

Mangku Debel, a Kedisan hamlet resident who works as a legal clerk for the women’s rights NGO LBH APIK, stated that polygamy, mostly involving elderly, rich and powerful men taking much younger women as their second or third wives, and sexual abuse targeting underage girls, were the two main problems that the local administration had to address in its education program. 

“Men who commit polygamy here believe that the act convinces the public that they are more powerful and wealthier than the other men,” Education on these issues, Debel argued, must target the executives of the traditional customary villages because this group has the power, according to Balinese traditional law, to authorize a marriage or a divorce. Bali has nearly 1,500 traditional customary villages locally called desa pekraman. 

These villages are autonomous entities with a reserved right to draft their own awig-awig (written law) and sima (unwritten convention). They wield a substantial influence that often eclipses the one possessed by the state’s administrative village or desa dinas, due to their role as the primary organizer of temples’ religious rituals as well as the important rites of passage of their members. 

“The local administration should provide the executives of the traditional customary villages with the knowledge, including the legal aspects, of the rights of women, the nature of sexual abuses toward children, statutory rape and polygamy,” he said, adding that such knowledge would inform the executives when they have to make decision on the marriage or divorce of their members. In the recent high-profile case that sparked nationwide uproar, a 40-year-old married man with two children married a pregnant 14-year-old girl. 

The man had carried out a sexual relationship, a consensual one he claimed, with the girl since she was 13 years old. The local bendesa (chief of traditional customary village) authorized and witnessed the marriage because he wanted to prevent the birth of an out-of-wedlock baby in his village. Such a birth would cause spiritual impurity in both the mother and the whole village, according to the traditional belief and law. 

When the law enforcement agency and the NGOs pursued a legal case against the man, the village and its executives were thrown into confusion because for them, the marriage was a valid one and in accordance with traditional law. They were not aware of the national law on marriage and on children protection.

source : bali daily