Indonesia’s juvenile justice system under scrutiny after girl, 12, kills mother

A rare case of matricide in Indonesia in which a girl, 12, was arrested for the murder of her mother has put the country’s treatment of juvenile suspects in the spotlight.\nThe child, identified only as AL due to her age, is suspected of having killed her mother, Faizah Soraya, in the early hours of the morning on December 10, when the older woman was asleep in their home in the North Sumatran city of Medan.\nSoraya was found with 26 stab wounds to her body after AL allegedly attacked her with a kitchen knife, waking her sister and father, who removed the alleged murder weapon and called an ambulance.\nThe 42-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene.\n“The investigation has determined that AL is a child in conflict with the law and she is charged with articles under the domestic violence law,” Medan police chief Jean Calvijn Simanjuntak said at a press conference on December 29, adding that AL had also been charged with murder.\nThe Malekat Hukum International Law Firm told This Week in Asia that Indonesian criminal law clearly distinguished between adult and child perpetrators following the enactment of the 2012 Juvenile Criminal Justice System. The term “children in conflict with the law” applies to suspects aged 12 to 17.\n\n“This provision shows that the minimum age of criminal responsibility in Indonesia is 12. So children aged over 12 can legally be held criminally responsible, but are not the same as adult perpetrators and can only be sentenced to criminal penalties or actions based on special provisions.”\nAhmad Sofian, a criminal law lecturer at Bina Nusantara University, told This Week in Asia that while AL’s case was “very concerning”, it was still a criminal matter and there were differences in how juvenile and adult offenders were processed.\n“In dealing with child perpetrators, the first thing that must be done is a study on the social, psychological and parenting factors in the household that may have caused the child to commit a crime. This study is mandatory according to the Juvenile Criminal Justice System,” he said.\n“Some cases with a child perpetrator can be resolved outside the court with a restorative justice mechanism. Children who commit crimes cannot be sentenced to more than 10 years [in juvenile detention], and are prohibited from being sentenced to life imprisonment or the death penalty.”\nDifferent treatment\nIn Indonesia, children under the age of 18 serve custodial sentences in juvenile detention centres rather than actual prisons.\nDue to her age, AL has been placed in a safe house granting her rights such as continuing her education, according to police. She remains under the strict supervision of experts, including child psychologists.\nMatricide, or the killing of one’s own mother, is an extremely rare crime, although global figures are difficult to find as many countries include matricide under the broader umbrella of femicide, or the gender-related killing of women and girls.\nAccording to figures published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in November last year, around 50,000 women and girls globally were killed by a family member or partner in 2024 out of 83,000 women and girls killed intentionally.\nHowever, these figures were likely to be higher, the agency said, due to under-reporting.\n\n\nIn the Medan case, Rahmi Fauzia, a psychology lecturer at Lambung Mangkurat University, told This Week in Asia there were two important “causal factors”.\n“The internal factors were the result of parenting patterns that showed indicators of violence,” she said. “The external factors that contributed to the crime resulted from environmental influences, one of which was social media.”\nAccording to the police investigation, Soraya allegedly regularly threatened her husband and two daughters with a knife, and had been violent towards her family for several years.\nThe police added that AL was inspired to use a knife after playing the online game Murder Mystery and watching the anime series Detective Conan, which included a murder involving a similar weapon.\nIndonesia has specialised support for victims of domestic violence through the Integrated Service Unit for the Protection of Women and Children, but families are sometimes reluctant to report cases because of social stigma, according to Fauzia.\nMedan-based psychologist Irna Minauli told This Week in Asia that children in conflict with the law were mostly also victims.\n“For example, they were victims of a dysfunctional family, experienced violence or were exposed to television or social media that inspired their actions. Of course, not all children who watch or play games with violent themes become murderers, but underlying predisposing factors need to be considered,” she said.\n“Children who grow up exposed to violence in their families are a more vulnerable group.”\nAge of responsibility\nAround the world, there is no set age of criminal responsibility, although the global average is 12, according to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, which recommends that it be at least 14.\nIn Indonesia, there has been some discussion over the years from legal experts and human rights advocates about raising the threshold, although this has failed to gain much traction due to the special legislation already in place.\n“The juvenile criminal justice system prioritises the principle of the best interests of the child, restorative justice and makes imprisonment a last resort,” the Malekat Hukum International Law Firm said. “The maximum sentence that can be imposed on a child is half of the maximum sentence for an adult.”\n\nForensic psychologist Fauzia agreed that the law was already robust due to the different approaches to child and adult offenders. “The difference lies in the purpose and type of punishment. For children, it is rehabilitative. For adults, it is about accountability.”\nHowever, Minauli said that there was a case to be made for raising the age of criminal responsibility to 18 in Indonesia, even with all the current provisions in place.\n“Twelve-year-olds do not yet have the awareness to be held accountable. They are still in the concrete operational stage, so they only focus on what they know,” she said.\n“When it comes to the consequences of their actions, they just can’t imagine them.”\n