But Tracy Bantleman and her husband, both Canadians, insist ferociously that he has done nothing at all; didn't even know the children involved. Ferdinant Tjiong, an Indonesian teacher's assistant who is with him in the police cells is equally adamant, as is his wife Sisca. Female primary school principal Elsa Donohue, an American, is accused of participating and, in some versions of the story, videotaping the crimes, some of which are said to have taken place in her glass-walled office. She says she can't believe what she's hearing. Their principal, Tim Carr, their co-workers and their friends stand behind them, but, despite their protestations, Bantleman and Ferdi face an uncertain future after being detained on Monday last week. Already this case has seen a number of outsourced cleaning staff jailed and another dead from drinking bleach while in custody. Ministries of the Indonesian government have taken sides and the President himself has weighed in; a $US125 million lawsuit has been filed against the school and calls made for it to be shut down. Another suit, of an undisclosed size, is on the way. The parents say they'll be dealing with the fallout of the attacks for the rest of their children's lives; the school which has been educating the children of foreign workers in Indonesia since 1951, must now wonder if it has a future at all. And much of it now hinges on the uneven quality of the Indonesian justice system.

Late in March, a five-year-old pre-school boy, the son of an Indonesian mother and a Dutch father, started refusing to wear pants, and told his mother he didn't want to go to the toilet. Eventually she got from him a shocking tale: he'd been locked in a cupboard in the toilets near the school's preschool by cleaning staff employed by international outsourcing company, ISS, and anally raped. The mother took her son to three doctors for tests, one of which, Pondok Indah hospital, confirmed her worst fears: her son had been sexually abused and had contracted herpes and a bacterial infection. The school, devastated, offered to help, and three days later, a representative accompanied the mother when she filed a police report. Head of School Tim Carr says the boy's parents wanted his privacy protected, so the school said very little in public. The police quickly arrested two ISS cleaners who, a week later, confessed to the crime. Four others were declared suspects. But the mother's lawyer Andi Asrun, and sister, both former journalists, counselled her to take her tale to the public and so, three weeks after first alerting the school to the attack, on April 14, she held a media conference in a restaurant.

Her story was an instant sensation - in a country where envy of the West is easily stoked, this tale, which showed that even the most privileged, protected people in Indonesia were not safe from sexual abuse, was electrifying. The school was caught unprepared by the pulse of publicity, and had nothing to say - what Carr now says was an error. The parents assembled a meeting of other parents to tell their story and ask for help. If anybody else with a story of abuse came forward, they said, it would help their case. At that meeting, one other mother spoke up. Her son was a friend of the first victim, and she said that, just the night before, after a process of intense questioning, he had described an attempted attack by cleaners. He'd managed to fight them off, she said. In the media, the finer details of all this got lost. The school started facing calls for its closure; graffiti to that effect was sprayed on its gates, students were harassed as they entered and left, allegations made that a "permissive" dress code and lax morality provoked the crime.

Amid all this, the first parents launched a $12.5 million civil suit against the school. Then, in late April, it was revealed that a serial American paedophile, William Vahey, had worked at the school as a teacher between 1992 and 2002. No victims could yet be identified, but the US FBI was trying to fill in the blanks of his long and noisome career as a teacher. It threw new public attention on JIS. Meanwhile, the second mother's account of events was morphing. She said on April 25, that, under hypnosis, her son had identified both a security guard and a teacher's aide in the assaults. Over the months, the story has developed further. She has now told the full version to Fairfax Media. The second mother now says that Bantleman, Tjiong and primary school principal Elsa Donohue all abused her son, acting with the six cleaners from ISS and possibly others, including an unidentified guard. From the first week of the new school year in August, 2013, to March the following year, she says, her pre-schooler was regularly taken from the playground during the half-hour morning break and told he needed to be punished for being bad. He was sometimes first taken to Donohue's or Bantleman's offices, she says, then administered drugs either intravenously or in a "special light blue potion", then tied up.

She claims one or all of the perpetrators then took the boy by force to the toilets or to the upstairs part of the school's administration area, which is used as a staff room. "They were anal rapes, plus physical abuse and hurting until he can't scream any more, then raping him," the mother says. "It was not every day, maybe in once each month [on average] … but the maximum in one day was six [people] in a row, and threatening him with death if he told anyone." There were 20 or more rapes, she says, some of them filmed. Astonishingly, she says, all this happened virtually under her nose. She was at the school with her son almost every day. The rapes, she says, mostly happened between 10.45am and 11.15am. She would arrive at 11.15am to give her son his lunch. Asked if she had ever noticed anything wrong, the woman said: "A couple of times he came back late from break, he was exhausted, and his clothes were soaking wet." She says her son identified the alleged perpetrators from pictures he was shown in the yearbook. As the allegations were becoming known, a third alleged victim appeared, another friend of the first two, and another police report was filed.

In late May, the first parents increased their claim against the school tenfold to $US125 million, saying their son would require care for the rest of his life. The second mother sent emails to about 12 sets of parents with pre-school children, saying her son had also identified them as victims. The emails included photographs, taken from the yearbook, of Donohue, Bantleman and Tjiong, saying they were the perpetrators. (The teachers later filed a defamation complaint).The messages spread panic, but no other formal cases came forward. (There are rumours that there's another alleged victim, an Australian child, who has returned to Australia but does not want to take part in the case.) By June 11, two families were alleging teaching staff had raped their children, one implicating only janitors. On that day, though, the first mother's story also changed. According to the school's lawyer, Hotman Paris, it only happened after the failure of a June 11 mediation meeting to agree on a financial settlement. He says the mother went from that meeting, where the school had refused her demand for $13.5 million, to the police, and filed a new report alleging for the first time that teachers had abused her son too. The first mother says this is wrong. She says she had already raised these issues with police but they were slow to investigate because the accused were foreigners. The school's lawyers also have a witness who says that the first mother, with the help of police, met one of the cleaners in custody, Zainal, and ''promised Zainal that he would be released if he was prepared to say that JIS teachers were involved as the perpetrators of sodomy''.

Whatever happened, after June 11, it's clear that all three alleged victims were now saying teachers were involved. Police raided the teachers' offices and homes and removed items, as well as making requests for witness interviews. Bantleman and Tjiong were converted in mid-July from "witnesses" to "suspects", and after a full day of questioning last week, police took the two men into the cells. There, under Indonesian law, they can stay without charge for 60 days or more as the investigation continues. The founding embassies weighed in publicly, issuing an unusual statement saying they were "deeply concerned" about the teachers' detention and that: "We are surprised at these developments given the presumption of innocence in Indonesian law." Apart from the children's testimony and medical evidence, the police during their raids have taken a piece of rope, part of a kit in Bantleman's office which was assembled to give to flood- prone Jakarta neighbourhoods. Tracy says police had to unwrap it from its original cellophane packaging. They also took a yellow scarf, which all teachers are required to wear when on playground duty and a stick made by a child as part of a recycling project. "These are just items, they're not evidence," Bantleman told Fairfax Media. "Anyone could take them and make a story out of them."

The school says it's co-operating fully with police, but it's also standing firmly behind its teachers. Carr believes these events have strong parallels with the infamous "McMartin case" in the United States which began in 1983. Highly suggestive questioning of pre-schoolers and false medical "evidence" eventually identified 360 children from one preschool as the victims of horrendous satanic abuse. At trial, the case fell apart as the children's detailed evidence was found to have been planted into their heads by leading questioning from child abuse experts. JIS now claims they have evidence a similar thing has happened in this case. Jakarta International School was set up in 1951 by the Australian, British and American embassies and, though Carr does not say it, it's clear he fears this scandal may destroy it. Embassies and big companies will find it more difficult to attract people to work in Indonesia if the good name of the school is tarnished by child abuse accusations. But the parents of the three boys are adamant the rapes took place and the teaches must be punished.

They also have friends in high places. The general secretary of the country's Child Protection Commission, Erlinda, said this week that paedophiles were using JIS as "a haven for child sexual abuse". The school has been raided by the Religious Affairs Ministry; the pre-school was shut down because it did not have the correct licence from the Education Department (a form it was functionally impossible to get); and in June, the Immigration Department deported 21 teachers over minor discrepancies in their work permits. Both the first and second mothers also accuse the school of a cover up, saying Carr has renovated areas - particularly an all-glass office area where it's virtually impossible to imagine such crimes could have taken place, and the upstairs staff-room area. "The glass office area, my son tells me it's not like that," the first mother told Fairfax Media. "They changed the area. I don't know". (Carr says the glass was installed before any of these families had a child at the school.) If the detention of its teachers says anything, though, it's that the school is losing the argument with the police and probably the Indonesian public. The first mother's lawyer, Andi Asrun, says JIS has "tarnished its image". To fix it, every child there, as well as the staff, should submit themselves to medical tests for sexually transmitted diseases.

Meanwhile, two teachers are behind bars. The first mother, for one, is delighted: "I'm so proud to be Indonesian because the US government is so big. Did they really arrest these bules (white foreigners)? … I'm so proud of my country". But Tracy Bantleman has asked observers that they "look at the facts objectively and look into your hearts; I know that nothing has happened." Elsa Donohue, still free but accused of things that could ruin her career, has at least a little faith. "I do believe the truth will prevail; it always does; it's just a matter of time. I just hope we're not squeezed dry before that happens."

Disclosure: The author has two children attending the Jakarta International School.