"They used the application to reach their customers or directly establish contact with potential victims," said Chief of State Polices Special Economic Crime Unit, Agung Setya, at the Police Headquarters in Jakarta on Tuesday.
He further explained that suspect AR had entered a lot of data about his victims that could be accessed by the application users.
"The data thus fed facilitated any user of that application to identify if there were other members of the gay community in the vicinity as well," he added.
Application users could then directly contact the victims through the program itself.
Setya was reluctant to reveal which specific application he was referring to.
"It is an online application and that is that," he remarked.
Other than dating apps, AR also had a Facebook account that he used to peddle his victims. He operated under the account name Berondong Bogor.
In this case, the police have identified three suspects, naming them through their initials AR, U and E.
AR acted as a pimp who traded 148 under-aged children as sexual workers.
E is known as a vegetable seller in the Ciawi traditional market in Bogor, West Java, whose job was to recruit children to then be handed over to AR.
He would start by inviting the children to sell vegetables with him, and then lure them with extra money if they were found willing to work as sex workers.
In the network, E also provided a bank account to keep the money generated from the online prostitution business owned by AR.
U then acted as a pimp who owned four children in his network, which was distinct from ARs.
For their ill-advised acts, AR, E and U have been charged with multiple articles in the Indonesian law about Pornography, Electronic Transaction and Technology, Protection for Children, Money Laundering and Human Trafficking.(*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2016
