They Called Him Father. They Pressed Record.

Under the Shadow of “Father”

When the phone rang, Yusron was eating instant noodles. His sister’s number. He picked up. It wasn’t his sister.

“Yusron, child.”

It was Abah. He knew that voice. It was the one that came through the loudspeaker during Friday sermons. Abah was at his house. His sister’s phone.

“Cover up this shameful thing for your teacher,” Abah said, crying. “Child, everyone makes mistakes.”

Yusron put down his chopsticks. Steam was still rising from the noodles. He pressed record. On the phone screen, the record button turned red. He said nothing.

Abah kept talking. He said he was old, that he had been confused for a moment, that if the media found out he was finished. Yusron heard his sister whisper beside him, “Little brother, say something.”

He said nothing. He watched the steam from the noodles thin out bit by bit. The recording was still running. The little red dot blinked.

Finally Abah said, “Promise me, all right?”

Yusron said, “I need to ask Zia.”

He hung up. The noodles had gone cold. He saved the recording twice: one copy on his phone, one in the cloud. Then he called Zia. It was early morning where she was. She picked up. Her first sentence was, “He found you?”

“He did.”

“Did you record it?”

“I did.”

Zia was silent for a moment. Yusron heard wind on her end. She said, “I recorded it too.”

Before that call, Yusron had already been investigating Abah for a year.

A year earlier, Zia had told him on the phone that when she was sixteen, Abah stopped her in the school garden and told her to come with him to his residence. Once inside, he told her he loved her, pulled her down onto his lap, kissed her, touched her body, and asked her to touch him the same way. One of Abah’s children began pounding on the locked door. Abah signaled for her to leave. She escaped through the back door.

When Zia said these things, Yusron was in his dormitory in Jakarta. He hadn’t turned on the light. The phone was pressed to his ear, its glow on the ceiling. After he finished listening, he asked one question: “Have you told anyone else?”

“No.”

“You’ve told me now.”

He didn’t say “I’ll help you.” He didn’t say “I’ll protect you.” He hung up, opened his laptop, created a new file, and typed a single character as the title: “Evidence.”

The next day, he called Sukma. Sukma was a few years below them and still at the school. Yusron introduced himself: “This is Yusron, from Abu Barokat. Do you remember me?”

Sukma remembered. She remembered every senior’s name. Yusron asked her, “Did Abah ever do anything to you?”

The other end went quiet. Yusron heard Sukma’s breathing change. She said, “Why are you asking?”

“Because Zia told me some things.”

Sukma cried. She said that when she was seventeen, Abah invited her to join him for New Year prayers. After she entered his residence, he covered her mouth with his hand, told her to lie down, and took off the clothes below his waist. He kept saying he could no longer control himself. He touched her over her underwear. She kicked him hard in the stomach and escaped. As she ran, she looked back and saw Abah holding a flashlight, searching for her.

In the file, Yusron wrote: Sukma, New Year prayers, flashlight.

He kept making calls. Wanda Hamidah contacted another classmate. That classmate remembered that in their graduation year, late at night in the school bathroom, she saw a younger girl crying. Abah was looking for her, his face red, out of breath. That girl was Sukma.

Mahima Eka found a fourth person. A fifth. A sixth. Yusron recorded every detail: time, place, what Abah said, what the person was wearing. Seven pages. He printed it out and put it in his backpack.

Wanda arranged for them to meet with representatives of NWDI. It was the organization that ran their school, powerful and influential, and it funded some students to study in Cairo. The meeting was in an office in Lombok. The NWDI representatives listened, nodded, and said they would help hand the case to the police.

Zia called from Cairo to ask, “How did it go?”

“They said they’d help.”

“Do you believe them?”

Yusron didn’t answer. He looked at the seven-page document in his backpack, took it out, and read it again. Sukma’s name was on page three. Zia’s name was on page one.

Three weeks later, his sister’s message came.

After Abah finished crying on the phone, Yusron called Zia. Zia said Abah had contacted her too. In the recording, Abah admitted he had assaulted her, but begged her to stay silent. Zia saved the recording twice.

Sukma’s situation was different. She was summoned to Abah’s house. When she arrived, two police officers and an NWDI lawyer were waiting for her. They forced her to sign a document saying all her allegations were lies. She signed it. Later, when she confronted Abah’s wife, Hurmiati, she secretly recorded the conversation. Hurmiati said, “Do you want this to haunt you for the rest of your life? Do you want it to affect your chances of marriage later?”

The pressure even reached Yusron’s parents. Abah asked them to fly to Jakarta to find Yusron at his university. They didn’t find him. He was hiding in a hotel. His mother called, crying: “This pressure is torturing me to death.”

Yusron said, “Mom, I know.”

He hung up. He called Zia. It was three in the morning in Cairo. She picked up. Yusron said, “Let’s stop contacting each other for now.”

He didn’t hang up. He waited for her to hang up first. She did.

He deleted their chat history. Then restored it from the cloud. Then deleted it again. The phone screen went dark. He lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The air conditioner hummed. He didn’t cry.

In Cairo, after hanging up, Zia opened Instagram. She wrote a post calling on any Indonesian student who had been assaulted to contact her. After writing it, she didn’t publish it. She saved it as a draft. The next day, she opened the draft and deleted it. The third day, she wrote it again. This time she posted it.

After the post went up, a woman contacted her. The woman had attended Zia’s school and said she too had been sexually exploited by Abah. The alleged incident happened nearly a year after Abah promised Zia and Yusron he would change.

Zia screenshotted the message and saved it on her phone. She didn’t send it to Yusron. She sent it to Ayu Masruroh.

Ayu was a young woman whose friend had been sexually assaulted by a teacher at another school. Ayu had helped her friend pursue justice and used social media to call on victims to speak out. Ayu replied to Zia: “Find a lawyer.”

Ayu introduced them to Joko Jumadi. Joko had handled cases for survivors of sexual assault. He looked at Sukma’s evidence and said, “This one is the strongest.”

Sukma reported Abah to the police last February. She is still waiting for the police to act. Abah remains in his position.

In Jakarta, Yusron walked the same corridor to class every day. The corridor was long, with classrooms on both sides. He used to talk to Zia on the phone there. Now he walked past, phone in his pocket, no vibration. Sometimes he would stop in the middle of the corridor, take out his phone, and look at the black screen. He would put it back and keep walking.

One day, on campus, he saw a girl wearing the Abu Barokat school uniform. He stopped. The girl walked past and glanced at him. He thought of Sukma. He thought of Zia at sixteen. He took out his phone and called Zia.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

“Are you still waiting?”

“I’m waiting.”

“Me too.”

He didn’t say “I’m coming to find you.” He hung up and bought a plane ticket. Jakarta to Cairo. He didn’t tell his mother. In his backpack: three shirts, a laptop, a voice recorder, the seven-page document. He printed a new copy.

At Cairo airport, he saw Zia. She wore a dark pink headscarf, sunglasses pushed up on her head. She didn’t run toward him. He walked over. She said, “You came.”

“I came.”

“Not to hide?”

“No. To wait for the police with you.”

Zia nodded. A straw bag hung from her shoulder. She reached out and put her hand on his head. He held her. They said nothing. People walked back and forth in the airport. Someone pushed a luggage cart, wheels rolling on the floor. A flight announcement played. They stood there for a while.

Last month, they got married.

The wedding was in a small room in Cairo. Zia wore a white top and a pink headscarf. Yusron wore gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt. Not many people came. Sukma didn’t come. She is still waiting for the police. Abah is still at the school.

Lawyer Joko said the courage and care the students showed in gathering evidence impressed him. He told the BBC that the secret recordings they obtained documented in real time how victims were pressured and told to stay silent, making them valuable evidence. “The recordings mention multiple victims, and the person involved admitted it himself. These are key pieces of evidence,” he said.

Over the past three years, Joko and his team have handled twenty cases involving sexual assault at Islamic boarding schools in the area. He believes many more cases remain unreported.

Indonesia’s National Commission on Violence Against Women has described sexual assault in Islamic boarding schools as a national emergency. But legal experts say many cases never enter the judicial process because victims are persuaded to withdraw their allegations or pressured into silence.

The BBC contacted Abah and Hurmiati about the allegations. Neither responded. NWDI said it was still conducting an internal investigation into the allegations and denied attempting to cover up sexual assault claims. The organization said it has a responsibility to protect itself from reputational damage caused by the alleged actions of individuals.

In Zia and Yusron’s apartment in Cairo. The room is small: a table, two chairs, a tiny kitchen. A voice recorder sits on the table. Zia’s phone rings. It’s Sukma. Zia picks up and puts it on speaker.

“The police still haven’t acted,” Sukma says.

“I know.”

“I’m still waiting.”

“We’re waiting too.”

After hanging up, Zia picks up the voice recorder and presses play. Abah’s voice comes out of the small speaker: “Cover up this shameful thing for your teacher. Child, everyone makes mistakes.”

Yusron walks over and stops the recording. He looks at Zia. Zia looks at him. She says, “We’re married, but Abah is still at the school.”

Yusron nods. He puts the recorder back on the table. Outside the window is a Cairo street, cars honking. On the table, besides the recorder, there is a pack of stomach medicine, a pothos plant, and a printed copy of the seven-page document. The corners of the pages are slightly curled.

Zia says, “Tomorrow I’ll call Joko.”

Yusron says, “I’ll call with you.”

They don’t say anything else. Zia goes to the kitchen to boil water. Yusron sits at the table and opens the seven-page document. The first page has Zia’s name. The third page has Sukma’s. He turns to the last page. In the blank space there is a line in Zia’s handwriting: “Sami’na wa ata’na. We hear, and we obey.”

Below it, another line, also in Zia’s handwriting: “But we did not.”

Yusron closes the document. The water has boiled. From the kitchen, Zia asks, “Do you want tea?”

“Yes.”

She brings the tea over and sets it on the table. Two cups. Steam rises. They sit, waiting for the tea to cool a little. The phone lies on the table, screen up. No new messages. Sukma is in Lombok. Abah is at the school. The police still haven’t acted.

But the voice recorder is still on the table. The seven-page document is still open. Both are still there.