SRI MULYATI
Karaoke cashier scapegoated for bosses
Sri Mulyati ( born 1975), a mother of four, worked as a cashier and receptionist at ACC Karaoke club in Semarang, Central Java. Police raided the venue on June 8, 2011, and found one of the employees was a 17-year-old girl. Sri was on holiday at the time of the raid, but her manager, Joni, summoned her to the club. Upon arrival, she was arrested by police and accused of economic or sexual exploitation of a child. Police refused to arrest the club’s owner or manager for hiring the underage worker. Semarang District Court on January 24, 2012, sentenced Sri to one year in jail and fined her Rp2 million, which would result in another two months imprisonment if she failed to pay. Semarang High Court upheld the verdict. In January 2014, the Supreme Court overturned the lower courts’ verdicts. She was awarded compensation of Rp5 million from the state for 13 months’ wrongful imprisonment, but the mechanism for receiving the compensation proved to be a bureaucratic nightmare. Three years later, she was yet to receive the money.