For decades, allegations of sexual abuse in Indonesia’s Islamic boarding schools have been shrouded in silence, pressured into darkness by institutional loyalty, social stigma, and systemic cover-ups. But a small group of brave former students from Lombok’s Abu Barokat school have risked everything to pull these allegations into the open, sparking a national reckoning with a crisis that activists call a national emergency.
The story begins with two former star pupils, Ziadatur Rahmah (known to friends as Zia) and Yusron Azzahidi, who reconnected years after graduating while studying at university—Yusron in Jakarta, Zia in Cairo. During a late-night conversation about their old school days, Zia shared a devastating secret she had carried for years: when she was 16, their highly respected head teacher Ahmad Imanuddin Sumar, known affectionately to students as “Abah” (father), sexually assaulted her.
Zia recalled that Abah intercepted her on school grounds when she left class to use the toilet, convinced her to follow him to his on-campus home, and assaulted her there. She only escaped when one of Abah’s children knocked on the locked front door, forcing Abah to let her slip out the back. The trauma left Zia feeling “dirty, ruined, and lost.”
Yusron, who had long revered Abah and been taught the school’s core motto “We hear, and we obey,” struggled with the revelation. But he could not shake Zia’s story, and suggested they work with two other former classmates to gather corroborating evidence from other potential victims. As they reached out to old school friends via encrypted messaging, more accounts of abuse began to surface.
One of the most alarming accounts came from 17-year-old Sukma Rohana, who was still a student at the school at the time. She told the group that Abah had lured her to his home for New Year’s prayers, then attempted to rape her. She only escaped after mustering the strength to kick him in the stomach and flee.
Slowly, the group built a seven-page document outlining allegations of abuse against six students, including Zia, Sukma, and four others. The group arranged a meeting with leaders of Nahdlatul Wathan Diniyah Islamiyah (NWDI), the powerful organization that runs Abu Barokat and hundreds of other Islamic schools across Indonesia, to present their evidence. NWDI representatives initially promised to help the group take the case to police.
But weeks later, Yusron received an urgent text from his sister asking him to call her immediately. When he did, it was not his sister on the line—it was Abah, who was in Yusron’s family home after NWDI had shared the group’s evidence document with him. What followed was a brazen attempt to force the students into silence.
Abah pleaded with Yusron to cover up the allegations, sobbing “Cover the shame of your teacher. Everyone makes mistakes, my child,” and warning that if the story leaked to the press, he would be destroyed. He pressured Yusron to retract his evidence and lie for him, then called Zia to exert the same pressure. Unbeknownst to Abah, both Yusron and Zia recorded every word of these calls.
The pressure did not end there. Sukma was summoned to Abah’s home, where she found two police officers and an NWDI lawyer waiting. They forced her to sign a document retracting all her allegations, a confrontation she also secretly recorded. When she later challenged Abah’s wife Hurmiati about the retraction, Hurmiati was captured on tape telling Sukma to respect the “agreement” that nothing happened, warning her that the allegations would “haunt you for the rest of your life” and ruin her chances of getting married.
Abah even pressured Yusron’s parents to travel from Lombok to Jakarta to find Yusron at his university. Yusron hid in a hotel to avoid them, but the ordeal left his mother so stressed that she begged Yusron to drop the investigation. Reluctantly, he agreed, putting his pursuit of justice on hold.
Throughout this ordeal, the friendship between Zia and Yusron had grown into a long-distance romance, but the trauma of the investigation left Zia struggling emotionally. Eight months after Yusron paused the probe, they learned of a grassroots advocacy group raising awareness of sexual abuse in Islamic schools, founded by a young activist named Ayu Masruroh, who had helped another survivor secure justice after an assault by a teacher at a different school. Ayu’s public calls for survivors to speak out inspired Zia to post a call for other survivors to contact her on Instagram.
What she discovered confirmed their worst fears: even after Abah had begged Zia and Yusron for silence and promised to change his ways, he had allegedly abused another student at the school just a year later. This revelation convinced the pair that Abah had never intended to stop, and that their work for justice could not wait any longer.
Yusron’s parents finally agreed to let the pair continue their quest, and this time they worked with Ayu to connect with an experienced lawyer who specialized in representing sexual abuse survivors. He advised them to move forward with Sukma’s case, which he deemed the strongest for prosecution. Sukma filed a formal police complaint against Abah in February of last year. To date, police have taken no action, and Abah remains in his post as head teacher.
When the BBC reached out to Abah and his wife for comment on the allegations, they declined to respond. NWDI has stated that it is conducting an internal investigation and denies any attempt to cover up abuse claims, saying it has a “duty to safeguard the organisation from being tarnished by the alleged actions of individuals.”
Indonesia’s National Commission on Violence Against Women has labeled sexual abuse in Islamic boarding schools a national emergency. Legal experts note that the vast majority of cases never reach court, as victims are pressured to withdraw their allegations or stay silent entirely. Joko Jumadi, the lawyer representing Zia, Yusron, and Sukma, has handled 20 such cases in West Nusa Tenggara province over the past three years, and says the known cases are “just the tip of the iceberg.” He credits the students with exceptional courage, noting that their secret recordings of pressure to stay silent—including admissions of abuse from Abah himself—are invaluable evidence that will help cut through the culture of silence.
For Zia and Yusron, the shared struggle for justice has forged an unbreakable bond. Earlier this year, three years after they began working together, Yusron moved to Cairo to be with Zia, and the couple married last month. “I was exhausted. Jakarta had been intense, because I was dealing with the police case the whole time. So when I saw Zia… it was like medicine,” Yusron says. Zia adds, “He came all the way to Egypt for me. I trust him. That’s why I’m with him.”
For Sukma, the fight continues. “I don’t want what happened to me, to happen to any other students. I want justice,” she says. Her courage, and the courage of Zia and Yusron, has opened a national conversation about a long-ignored crisis, giving hope to hundreds of other survivors who have remained silent for far too long.
