Shaman who held sex slave arrested
August 8, 2018
Indonesian police on Wednesday said they had arrested a shaman for abducting a 13-year-old girl and keeping her as a sex slave for 15 years.
Police found the woman, now aged 28, naked in a jungle cave in the backyard of the shaman's home near the village of Bajungan in Central Sulawesi province following a tip from one of her relatives.
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The 83-year-old shaman, identified as Jago, allegedly tricked the woman into believing the spirit of a young man named Amrin lived inside him, local police chief Iqbal Alqudusy told French news agency AFP. The victim was convinced Amrin was her boyfriend.
"Every day, for many years, the shaman had sex with her under the pretense he was possessed by a male spirit," Alqudusy said.
"She is very disoriented, she's scared of people and keeps wanting to go back to the cave," Alqudusy said, adding that the woman would undergo therapy.
The woman is now at a safe house. The shaman faces 15 years in prison if he is found guilty of having sex with a minor.
Shaman's family knew
The shaman's wife, son and daughter-in-law, who is the victim's sister, did not tell other people because the shaman threatened to kill them if they did so, police said.
The woman's family reported her missing in 2003 after she visited the shaman for treatment of an illness.
Her father spent years trying to find his daughter, but the shaman told the family that the girl had gone far away and would not return.
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Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country, but superstitious practices still exist throughout the region.
People often turn to shamans, who are seen as a kind of medical practitioner who has influence in the spirit world, to treat illnesses or to consult them on everyday life.
law/rt (AFP, dpa)