I found this question on a forum https://www.livinginindonesiaforum.org/forum/general/laws-visas-money-matters-and-documents/52502-age-of-consent Wikipedia says 15. However, Article 82 child protection law says the following:
Every one who deliberately commits violence, or threat of violence, forces, does tricks, tells a series of lies, or persuades a child to do, or let obscene acts be done, is subject to penalty of 15 (fifteen) years at most and 3 (three) years at least and fine of Rp. 300.000.000 (three hundreds millions) at most and Rp. 60.000.000 at least.
https://www2.congreso.gob.pe/sicr/cendocbib/con4_uibd.nsf/E67F49F7CC441622052580330075862B/$FILE/ANNEX-3-Laws-of-child_protection.pdf I found the law a bit weird. It prohibits some nonconsensual stuffs like "deliberately commits violence, or threat of violence, forces, does tricks, tells a series of lies", however, later it adds a phrase 'persuade'. Persuading someone is not necessarily nonconsensual. All the words describe nonconsensual activity except 'persuade'. Also, one interpretation of this article is that all sex with girls under 18 is illegal. However, if that's the case, why not just make it simple and
don't have sex with girls under 18
? If all obscene acts with a girl under 18 are illegal, why doesn't the law simply say don't do obscene acts with a girl under 18? If some obscene acts are legal, why does it say "coerce, trick, bla bla bla, persuade" girls to have sex with you if she is under 18? Why does the law prohibit persuading girls to do obscene acts but does not prohibit the actual doing of the obscene act itself? Kind of weird. Of course the law says do obscene acts instead of having sex. I am not even sure what obscene acts include. What am I missing here? Actually, due to this, is age of consent in Indonesia 18 or 15? Any actual court cases will be great. In the forum I sent someone actually asked this:
"The exploitation" and "persuasion" angle is not very clear to me. So sex with a girl above 15 is legal unless you "exploit" or "persuade" her to do so. Can anyone shows actual court cases? It seems that actual court cases for this sort of thing is very few.
So if the law is to be read literally, it looks like having sex with a girl above 15 is legal unless you "exploit" or "persuade". Which is absurd.
43.2k 2 2 gold badges 89 89 silver badges 174 174 bronze badges asked Jun 11, 2021 at 16:51 obfuscated obfuscated 1,085 2 2 gold badges 9 9 silver badges 13 13 bronze badges Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Commented Jun 14, 2021 at 12:47To keep in mind as a foreigner: Child sex offences that are illegal in your home country but legal in a foreign country may be treated as a crime if you ever return back home. For example in Germany it is one of very few crimes that Germans will be sentenced for if it happens abroad.
Commented May 11, 2023 at 19:35Content Warning: this post mentions rape / non-consensual sex and discusses (in some non-explicit detail) coercion of minors.
As of Tuesday, March 1st, 2016, according to the Indonesian Penal Code (translated version; I cannot read Indonesian), Indonesia's age of consent is 16 years old (18 for homosexual acts). Indonesia also does not have close-in-age exemptions (for example, in Canada, the age of consent is 16 years old, but a 14-year-old can consent to a partner less than 5 years older, and a 12-year-old can consent within 2 years).
I cannot verify this source but according to Wikipedia, which cites this PDF, the age of consent could be raised to 18 years under the Child Protection Act arguing that sexual acts can cause bodily or mental harm and "child" is defined as anyone under 18 years of age. As an example, according to Wikipedia, a court case in 2009 (Sydney Morning Herald) saw this used to convict an Australian man.
There is nothing weird about this law. I left this as a comment, but let me elaborate in an answer. Your misconception is that persuasion is an innocent and ethical thing. The harsh reality is that children are, on average, more ignorant than adults and lack judgement, foresight, and rationality at times, and there are disgusting individuals that will exploit this fact to get children to do things they otherwise wouldn't such as sex, or drugs. Additionally, age comes with a power imbalance - think a teacher using their power over a student to convince or coerce them into having sex with them. That is not strictly violence, nor telling lies, or "forcing" in the strict sense, nor trickery, but a reasonable individual would still consider that to be not real consent.
The fact is that children can only consent if it is entirely of their own accord and judgement and there is no extrinsic pressure forcing or persuading them to. In fact, I argue that adults are subject to this too and persuading or coercing an adult into having sex is also disgusting (but doing this to children is far more abhorrent). But since children are considered by law to lack the judgement to protect themselves against coercion and realize they should reject and get away from their persuader, the law instead protects them.
Persuading someone is not necessarily non-consensual.
It holds a high chance of being non-consensual, and consent is only considered real when it is a) not coerced, and b) the subject is legally capable; that is, not intoxicated, not a minor (by whatever the age of cosnent is), etc.
If all obscene acts with a girl under 18 are illegal, why doesn't the law simply say don't do obscene acts with a girl under 18?
Because sex with people between 16 and 18 is legal (in Indonesia) under the right conditions. Although I must say, since you word it as "obscene acts", then of course they're illegal. Obscene acts are, by definition, morally reprehensible and/or legally incriminating, so illegal things are illegal, is basically what you're saying. Just say "having sex" if you mean "having sex".
Why does the law prohibit persuading girls to do obscene acts but does not prohibit the actual doing of the obscene act itself? Kind of weird.
This makes no sense at all, and hopefully after reading my answer you understand why this makes absolutely no sense.
How in the earth anyone can have sex with someone without persuading? He walks the street and accidentally plug his penis in?
. Rape? There are many ways to have sex with someone without persuading them that I don't think I have to list. Your main mistake is still conflating persuaded / coerced consent as real consent.
In summary, persuasion is not some innocent matter of convincing someone in a friendly manner to have sex. It includes coercion, abusing one's power, exploiting a child's ignorance and limited judgement or foresight, and other reprehensible factors. Consent cannot be given if the individual is too young, impaired, unable to legally give consent, or coerced into it.