Front Burner - Canadian teacher home after ‘nightmare in Indonesia’

Episode Date: July 16, 2019

Neil Bantleman was teaching at a school in Jakarta, Indonesia when he and seven others were accused of sex crimes against students. He maintained his innocence despite being convicted in an Indonesian court. CBC's The Fifth Estate co-host Mark Kelley travelled to Indonesia to look into the case and found the serious flaws in the investigation and evidence presented against him. Now, Bantleman is back in Canada after being granted clemency. Today on Front Burner, Kelley talks to guest host Michelle Sheppard about what he found in the course of making The Fifth Estate's 2016 documentary Nightmare in Indonesia.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. In the fall of 1998, an elderly woman known as the Cat Lady went missing. In the fall of 1998, an elderly woman known as the Cat Lady went missing. She had a very distinctive silhouette and very recognizable when you'd see her walking into town. A handkerchief on her hair, long overcoat, like somebody that lived on the street.

All police could find were her 30 cats shot dead. I always knew something had happened to her, to just vanish like that. Uncover the Cat Lady Case from CBC Podcasts is available now. Hi, I'm Michelle Shepard, filling in for Jamie Poisson. After five years in prison in Indonesia, Neil Bantaman is back home in Canada. The teacher was working at a prestigious school in Jakarta when he was accused and convicted of sexual abuse against three students. But Bantaman has always maintained his innocence.

I just want the truth to be told. Yes. It's time for justice. Yes. has always maintained his innocence. I just want the truth to be told. Bernie and I are going for the truth. It's time for justice. I'm in corruption in this country. We need all the international help and assistance that we can get. His wife and school stood by him, and a 2016 investigation by CBC's Fifth Estate

found the case against him was seriously flawed. Some of the evidence was downright bizarre, including claims that a magical stone and potion were used during the assault. Today on FrontBurner, the Fifth Estate's Mark Kelly, who went to Indonesia as part of his investigation, tells us about the years-long saga, how Neil Bantman's case exposes serious problems with Indonesia's justice system and the limits of a

Canadian passport. Mark, thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me on the show. Can you tell me how this story started? Because I understand that at the beginning, it didn't even include Neil Bantleman, that he wasn't accused of sexual assault. Yeah, the beginning of the story was when six cleaners were actually accused of being in some sort of pedophile ring at this prestigious school in Jakarta. And this wasn't a story that had any resonance here in Canada. This wasn't a story that caught our imagination at the Fifth Estate. But that, of course, was a massive story in Indonesia itself. And that started generating the headlines. There was a mother

behind this who said that her six-year-old son was at the root of this sexual assault ring that was happening at this school. And that really is where the story got traction. And that's where the story started to build. So these cleaners worked at the school? These cleaners worked at the school. They were arrested, and this came after a parents' meeting where the parents said that they'd heard of these allegations of sexual assault coming from the children themselves. Knock him in the toilet.

Have you been attacked in the toilet? He was, like, getting very... Yes, mommy. Maura Quick was there, along with almost 200 others. When we all came to that meeting, we all believed, well maybe not all, 99.9% of the people

believed something happened. This put pressure on the police to arrest them. They arrest the six cleaners. They're held overnight. We were told later that the cleaners were beaten. Confessions were beaten out of them, they claim. My eyes were burned with cigarettes. They stapled my ear. They forced me to eat cigarettes. My eyes were blindfolded with black tape. They hit me with a metal chair and a hose. In fact, one of the cleaners died that night. The police say that he committed suicide,

but we saw pictures of his body taken by his family where you could see about his face he had been badly, badly beaten. So there was all indications. We even spoke to a witness who was in the police jail that night, the night that they were being questioned, and he heard the screams that were coming and these allegations of cigarette butts being put out on their face, their faces were being stapled until they eventually produced their confessions, confessions that they would

then later recant. And yet, as we would learn, this was just the beginning of the story. So tell me how Neil Bantleman got involved in this. Well, at this point, and it's interesting, because the mother who's leading the crusade, she launches a $12 million lawsuit against the school. And you managed to interview her, right? We did, yeah. You gave her a name that... Well, she went by the name Pippet. Right.

I will fight until end, no matter it is. People can call me crazy or crazy mom. I don't care, but my son know what I'm doing. She says her son has told her, supported by other children, that there were two staff members from that school who were also involved in this. This didn't come out at the beginning. Two staff members involved in this sex ring within the school, one of them being Neil Bannelman,

another one a teacher's aide named Ferdy, who was Indonesian himself. You know, I hung up the phone and was sitting there for a minute and just thinking, now I have to go tell my wife that I've been named as a suspect, accused of sexually assaulting kids. The worst thing that you could be accused of doing. When he came back in, he sat on the couch in front of me,

and all the color completely washed out of his face. And then that $12 million lawsuit suddenly becomes a $125 million lawsuit against the school. And what was he accused of doing? What was Neil accused of? Sexual assault, sexually assaulting three different children. Now, the testimony was really built around the child of Pippet, the woman I interviewed, her and her husband. And it was built around what he said. It was his word mostly against the word of the cleaners

who were already convicted but then signed that confession and then the word of Neil Bantle who were already convicted, but then signed that confession, and then the word of Neil Bantleman and Ferdy, the teacher's assistant. And he was convicted. And he was convicted. It was a blistering indictment of Bantleman. The defendant did not admit his crime or express regret for his deeds, nor did he apologize for what he did, which psychologically damaged underage children today

was a complete miscarriage of justice and we will continue to fight until the truth comes out and that's the stage where is that when you went to indonesia for the fifth estate to investigate his conviction had attracted our attention but then that conviction in fact was overturned in appeals court. Not guilty. Thank you everybody for all your support and hard work over the last 13 months. We're happy that the Indonesian legal system has proved its worth. So we knew we had an opportunity to talk to him, meet him, because he was now released. But he was in a limbo waiting to see

because then it had been appealed to the Supreme Court. But when you went at that point, you didn't know the details about the case that you know now. No. Was there a part of you, because I remember the coverage in Canada at that point, and reading it, and you weren't sure. I mean, you thought, well, here's a kid, maybe this happened. Maybe he actually is involved. After a long trial and a controversial case, the Canadian teacher jailed on sex abuse charges has been set free. And as journalists, and you know this well,

we have to go over there with the full possibility that, yes, this man is guilty. I mean, we weren't going over there to do public relations work for Neil Bantleman. What we had seen, you know, in the Canadian media, how this had been reported was pretty thin. Because certainly in Canada, nobody would really want to dedicate the time and the effort and the resources to go halfway around the world to interview this guy, to look into the case, to look into the evidence, to look at the trial transcripts and learn a bit more. So we took that on. So you went there, you took a look at all the evidence. What was the evidence? And when you tested it, what did you find? Well, I mean, you know, there was the evidence that, and this had

come from the child himself, that there was a magic blue potion that had been used to somehow sedate him and the other victims. That there was a magic stone that actually floated in the sky. And then that was actually put into him, into his body, to help ease the pain before he was going to be sexually assaulted by the men. So let me just stop you there. I know there's other evidence, but that's sort of the most fantastical of the evidence. Was that treated in court as legitimate? Absolutely. And police, in fact, the investigators, when they raided the school, went in there looking

for the magic blue potion. They went looking for this floating stone to see if it could be found, as well as secret rooms where the assaults took place. You know, and at one point, the police seized a blender that was in the school, the staff cafeteria, and said, aha, like this is the smoking gun. This must be the blender that was used to mix the magic potion. And in terms of witnesses, I mean, we were talking about here

where the child had said that he was sexually assaulted in Neil Bantleman's office. You know, we went to see the office. This is an office that has four walls that are all windows. There's no privacy whatsoever in this office. The office is in the administration area of the school. We were there. We were there for two or three days. It's the busiest part of the school.

And the child had alleged that these attacks took place during school hours, where people would be walking around freely. When you're getting a story like this from a six-year-old child, if this were to happen in Canada, there are experts who would come in and deal with this child to make sure that this story is coming from the child. You're not leading this child on with certain questions. Because there have been examples in history of children getting suggestive comments from police or parents. I think it was the famous case in the 80s in California.

The McMartin case. That's right. It started out here in Manhattan Beach looking like an isolated incident. Authorities now believe that at least 60 young children were victimized. Some children allege that a living creature was sacrificed on the church's altar.

None of the 124 witnesses offered any corroborating evidence to support the prosecutor's allegations. So the McMartin case was exactly what they were arguing in court. The defense was arguing in court. But it was an interesting thing happening in that court, and it was really instructive for the Bannelman team. The more it was introduced into court, sort of what had happened elsewhere in the world, foreign expertise, studies from experts, medical experts outside of Indonesia, and I spoke to a lawyer about this, the worse the case got for the Bannelman team. Because there was this sense from the Indonesian judiciary, don't tell us what

to do. Don't bring in your foreign experts to tell us what we should know. So that's why this judge just started throwing out this kind of evidence, this kind of expertise, saying, well, that's from somewhere else. That has nothing to do with here in Indonesia. And I want to get to that in a moment, the larger political context and what was happening at the time. Before we go away from the evidence, was there any forensic or physical evidence at all presented in the trial? The biggest, the bombshell that was presented, and this was presented by the mother, Pipit, was to say that there was physical evidence that her son had been sexually assaulted. That A, there was the sign of lesions in the child that would suggest he'd been raped,

and B, that he had tested positive for herpes, and that he had never had herpes before in his life, and the indication that this was a sexually transmitted disease, that was a result of him being raped. Because the doctor, it's not, because it's not somebody that's telling me, but the doctor that I met that checked my son, I asked, and then go to another doctor in the police, right? Did any of the accused attackers,

including Neil Bantamon, test positive for herpes? No. And did the boy have herpes? The boy, she claimed, had herpes. So we asked this mother, would you go to one more clinic on our behalf? We'll set it up. We'll find an independent clinic.

Go to that clinic. Have your son test it and share those results with us. She willingly did. She faxed us the results. We took those results to the expert. Pretend the initial one from Indonesia. If that were truly positive, this should be positive afterwards. If that were truly positive, this should be positive afterwards.

So this is now negative, which actually retrospectively proves that the initial ones were false positives. So this is the confirmation. That's the confirmation. Beyond a reasonable doubt, this child has not ever been exposed to herpes. I shared this information with her. She refused to believe it. You still remain convinced to this day that your son was sexually abused? Yes. No doubt.

No doubt. No doubt. Do you believe that Neil Bantleman sexually assaulted your son? Yes. She believed, in fact, that this was all part of this. She's Indonesian herself. Part of this Western conspiracy to try to protect Neil Bantleman. In addition to that, can you paint a larger picture

of what was going on at the time? And if there was any political interference over the courts, why do you think that was happening? Well, I think, okay, the larger political context for this was that the president at the time, and he was just reelected president, he's known as President Jokowi, very popular president, he had been elected on a bit of this sort of law and order campaign. And there were two things that he wanted to crack down. One was drug smuggling, which is a huge problem in Indonesia. And he, in fact, then brought in capital punishment. And the second thing he wanted to do was crack down on sex tourism

and sexual assaults that were happening in that country. Indonesia very much respects human rights. Our constitution respects human rights. But when it comes to sexual crimes, there is no compromise. In places like Bali, they have become sadly known for sex tourists and a lot of people are going there to have, Westerners going there to have sex with children. It's a real problem there.

It's a real problem there and they wanted to address it. So into this broader context walks Neil Bantleman and his wife, who show up in Jakarta thinking we're going to be working at this prestigious school, and this is going to be the adventure of a lifetime. Well, they didn't know exactly what they were walking into. And there's also another element that was very enlightening for us, is there's a super charged media climate in Jakarta. Jakarta is a huge city. I mean, at least 10 million is probably could be even twice that.

They don't even know the population exactly. It's growing so quickly. Mass media saturation there. And this was the story of the century. Everybody was covering this story. On your documentary, there was this clip of a show they have there. It was like a Judge Judy type real crime trial. Real crime trial, and Pippit shows up on that wearing a mask

to hide her identity. My son is young. He wasn't raped once. He was raped many times. It's not just the rapist that is responsible. It's the school as well, right? But it wasn't like that. The school neglected their responsibility. They said, take care of

your own kids. And there's a crowd cheering her on. And that show is one of the, it's called the Lawyers Club, is one of the highest rated shows in Indonesia. It's so incredibly sensational. And you can see what's happening. And then the next day, there are protests outside the school. People are rattling the gates of the school, demanding justice. So the court of public opinion had spoken. And I think this was the biggest factor. I don't think there's political interference as much as there was political considerations given to what do the people want. And even his lawyer, who was the most powerful criminal lawyer in Jakarta that they had hired, he told us, oh, this doesn't look good. And I said, well, what about the evidence?

He says, it doesn't matter as much about the evidence. These judges, the judiciary there, they wanted to please public sentiment. I'm a 30-year court experience. I can feel the way they're just asking questions to which direction. I know my case will lose or not. I already said that to my client. It's going to lose, I said. Even two months before the decision.

Even in the beginning of the case, I know they will be guilty. So you interviewed Neil during this brief moment of restricted freedom as he waits for the Supreme Court. And you look at all the evidence and you declare it's a bogus trial. What happens after you leave? What happens with the Supreme Court then? Well, the Supreme Court would then do pretty much what the district court, the first court had done. They would disregard the evidence that was brought by the defense. They would put more weight on the testimony of the six-year-old child. And based on these flawed medical reports, they would come to the conclusion that Neil was in fact guilty,

send him back to prison and add one more year. In fact, because he'd been out for about a year, add one more year to his sentence at that point. And, you know, Neil, when we spoke to him, as he was awaiting that verdict, I could tell he was rattled. Pretty early on. There were some factors that started pointing to the fact that this was not going to end positively for Ferdi and I. Because our notion as Canadians of fair play and of justice, he just realized it's not a question of that anymore.

There are external factors that are going to decide his fate over which he had no control or little control. It's got to be such a helpless feeling to be in that spot. Absolutely. And, you know, after he's sent back, they were gobsmacked. And at one point, and I would hear this from sources close to him, they were considering, the Bantleman family, they were considering as they awaited that verdict from the Supreme Court, whether they should just flee the country. He didn't have a passport, but there are ways he could have been whisked out of the country. But he had said at that time, we don't want to do this because I don't want to return to Canada with this cloud over my head that I'm a convicted pedophile.

I will stand there because they still believe somehow in truth and justice despite everything that being through so they decided we're gonna stay in the country and we will face the music but then when he was sent back to prison and I remember seeing the the video from them as they were being led back to the prison it was incredible because he just looked like a ghost of a man and the Bantleman family had said originally that we don't want him to come home with a cloud over his head. Well, after he was sent back to jail, they said, forget about the cloud over his head. We just want to do everything we can to get him out of jail. Today, he confirmed it wasn't truth, but clemency that set him free, granted a month ago by the

Indonesian government. Tracy and I are very happy to be home and reunited with our family. So he has returned home. Have you talked to him since he's been back? I have only spoken to his brother who called me last week to tell me the news. His brother Guy and I have been in regular uh communication now for a year and a half and then i happened to be on vacation last week he says i'm sure you've heard about this mark i said no i haven't heard what's the news he said he's home he got back a couple of weeks ago he returned at the end of june he's back at home with his his parents who live here in the toronto area and this you know incredible sense of relief from his brother,

who has now spent pretty much the last two years of his life doing everything he could to get his brother out of jail. Five years of your life, and there's that readjustment to freedom, which I think he's doing quite well with, and just getting reintegrated with being able to be free and to move about. Were you surprised that he got clemency? And do you know how that came about? I know some of it.

And this is certainly a story that we're going to continue to pursue at the Fifth Estate. I know it had gone to the highest levels in our country, certainly in the involvement of the prime minister. One of the big turning points, I think, ended up being, and I'm not trying to give ourselves the credit for it, but because we had actually taken the time to go over there and do the investigation, the government had really taken a bit of a different approach after our story came out looking at the evidence here.

And I think that they took a bit of a more proactive approach than had been taken before. How about the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Consular Affairs? The minister, late last night night spoke with his counterpart, the Indonesian foreign minister, and reiterated our point of view that this was a miscarriage of justice and that this case will have serious consequences on Indonesia's reputation. And I think that's where the then Trudeau government, because he'd been convicted, when he was convicted originally was the Harper government. I think they took a different approach than had been seen before and decided to get more involved. And these cases are so, so difficult because you're talking to be accused of being

a pedophile is really one of the most heinous acts. Absolutely. So people are listening to this and thinking, well, this poor kid, I mean, what, where do the allegations come from? And they have discomfort with that. The flip side is once you're accused of being a pedophile, I mean, that's a label that is almost impossible to get rid of. Absolutely. When these allegations first surfaced, did you believe that that child had been sexually abused? Why would you not? When a mother comes to the school and says that my child has been sexually abused, why would anybody think that that didn't happen? And, you know, Neil Bantleman understood the gravity of this. And this is where he said, we've got to fight this.

I mean, not only fight for my innocence to keep me out of jail, but fight to clear my name. And that's where all the energy was devoted to doing that. And yet was constantly unable to be able to do that. And, you know, it spoke a little to that environment in Indonesia. And it's an eye opener for a lot of Canadians that when, you know, you're traveling abroad, you don't think before, especially if you're, you know, as they were accepting a teaching contract over there.

One of your first questions isn't always, well, what's rule of law like there? Or what's the judiciary like? Or how easily could they be influenced by public opinion? I mean, you don't necessarily consider these things. We travel, Canadians, we travel abroad with our own sort of sense of justice and fairness. And we think that follows us wherever we go. But this was a real instructive case showing that that's not, in fact, what happens.

He was not protected by a Canadian passport. Thanks so much for joining me, Mark. Thanks, Michelle. That's all for today. Before I go, an update on the Indonesians convicted in this case. Of the five surviving cleaners, only one has been released on parole, according to local media. And the teacher's aide convicted alongside Neil Bantleman, Ferdinand Chiang, also remains behind bars. All continue to maintain their innocence. I'm Michelle Shepard. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.

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