The five Indonesian janitors accused of raping three pre-school children at the Jakarta Intercultural School have been found guilty and sentenced to seven- and eight-year prison sentences.
The findings will shock and frighten supporters of two teachers, Neil Bantleman and Ferdinant Tjiong, who are accused in a separate but related case of raping the same three children at the school.
The lawyer for two of the cleaners, Patra Zen, said outside the court he would appeal the ruling immediately. He said the judges had made their decision based on the testimony of a six-year-old boy as well as the evidence of the police and one doctor. The court was closed to observers.
But Mr Patra said there was no hard evidence of rape and the doctor had only said the medical evidence "doesn't rule out the possibility that what the child said is true".
"So the judgment is based on a possibility only," Mr Patra said. "Justice is not served".
The lawyer for another defendant, Muhammad Boli, also said he would appeal. He said the verdict appeared to be bad news for the two teachers, Mr Neil Bantleman and Mr Tjiong.
"I think so because the pattern is the same in both cases: it's about sodomy and there is no witness. The judges's ruling is based on the police interrogation only and the testimony of experts was ignored, " Boli said.
Four of the cleaners - Virgiawan Amin, Agun Iskandar, Zainal Abidin and Syahrial — initially confessed to the rapes, and, in their statements, some of them implicated a woman cleaner, Afrischa Setyani, who never confessed.
But on the first day of their trial, the four cleaners recanted their confessions, saying they had been coerced under police torture. All were sentenced on Monday to eight years in prison.
Afrischa Setyani was sentenced on Monday to seven years behind bars.
A sixth cleaner, Azwar, died under questioning in the police cells. The police say that he drank bleach out of shame during a break in interrogation and died, but his family say he died due to police torture.
Photographs of Azwar's corpse shortly after his death appear to show a cut on his lip and a bruised face.
Mr Patra said on Monday he wants an autopsy of Azwar conducted either by an independent doctor or a military doctor, and Mr Muhammad backed the call.
The medical evidence in both the cleaners' and the teachers' cases is largely the same, though one extra doctor — a police doctor — has made a medical report against the teachers.
When asked if the verdict in Monday's case could affect the teachers' case, Mr Patra said it depended on the panel of judges. There are different judges in the two cases.
Mr Bantleman is a joint British-Canadian citizen and Mr Ferdinant is an Indonesian teachers' aide. The embassies that set up the prestigious school - including Australia's - are watching this case closely.
The case exploded in the media in Indonesia when the mother of one alleged victim presented medical evidence that she said showed that the boy had contracted sexually transmissable herpes.
But an expert witness in the case, John Baird from Oxford University, told the court and later the Jakarta Globe newspaper, that there was no evidence of this.
"The defendants are almost certainly falsely accused," he said.
One family has also launched a $US125-million ($153-million) law suit against the school.
Evidence in the teachers' case will be presented to the court on Tuesday.
