“Despicable” former Kyoto workshop worker sentenced to five years in prison for sexually assaulting two disabled women

Extract from The Kyoto Shimbun via Yahoo! Japan

December 15 2022

OTSU, SHIGA Pref – A 29-year-old man, a former employee of a workshop for the disabled, was accused of quasi-forced sexual intercourse and quasi-forced indecency for sexually assaulting two women with severe intellectual disabilities. It was held at the Otsu District Court on the 15th. Presiding Judge Yasushi Hatayama handed down a sentence of 5 years imprisonment for “an extremely despicable and vicious crime”.

According to the judgment, on five occasions between 19 September 2020 and 5 June last year, the defendant violently assaulted a woman in her late teens attending a workshop for the disabled in Kyoto Prefecture, and in 10 September 2020, he also undressed a 31-year-old woman from the same workshop and touched her lower body.

The judge pointed out that, despite the fact that he was in a position to protect the victims, he took advantage of the fact that he could easily commit the crimes behind closed doors without being detected by a third party, and that the victims were in a situation where they did not understand the meaning of sexual acts, to make them do as he wished. In response to the defendant’s statement that he intended to stop if they showed any signs of reluctance, the court noted that he “fully understood the extent of the victims’ mental disabilities.”