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A top Dutch diplomat in Jakarta has been recalled and fired for a 2008 case of sexual abuse that was never prosecuted, media reports said on Friday. 

The NIS News Bulletin, citing De Telegraaf newspaper, said that abuse involved male subordinates.
 
According to diplomatic sources, the report said, it was decided at top civil service level not to institute criminal proceedings in order to cover up the 2008 scandal. 

"If this had come out, the diplomatic consequences for relations between the Netherlands and Indonesia could not be foreseen," an insider was quoted as saying. "The abuse of the Indonesian subordinates after all took place under the responsibility of the embassy. The national interest prevailed here over the judicial criminal interest. There was great relief that the Indonesian men never went to their own police to make a report."

The diplomat in question is described by the newspaper as Wim M.. He had been on the payroll of the foreign ministry since May 1971 as "transferable civil servant."

From April 2006, he was reportedly the deputy director of the Erasmus House, a cultural centre of the Dutch embassy in Jakata. There, disquieting signals came in about him in October 2008.

The NIS report said a staff member of a company that provided the security for the residences of the diplomats reported that he had been sexually abused by Wim M. during his night shift. After some investigation by the security company, it emerged that two other guards had had similar experiences with the diplomat in the garage of his residence.

Following an initial internal investigation, the NIS report said the embassy sounded the alarm in The Hague, whereupon the Special Investigations of the Foreign Affairs Security Service (VDB) was flown in to carry out further investigations. 

From this, shocking findings emerged, according to De Telegraaf, which quoted from the letter of dismissal: "You have forced a guard into oral sex."

The civil servant fought his dismissal at the administrative court in the Netherlands. The court in Middleburg however ruled on 2 December 2010 that there was evidence of "a very grave form of sexual intimidation" that took place "repeatedly."

The foreign ministry says it gave the Indonesian security guards a sum of money and reported Wim M. to the Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) in the Netherlands. 

However, it did not come to a criminal prosecution "because in Indonesia sexual behaviour is only an offence if there is violence or threat of violence," said an OM spokesman in the newspaper.