Tokyo Doctor Ruled Not Guilty in Remanded Indecency Case

From Jiji

March 12 2025

TOKYO – Tokyo High Court on Wednesday found a 49-year-old doctor not guilty of licking a patient’s breast just after he operated on her at a Tokyo hospital in 2016.

In the case sent back from the Supreme Court, Presiding Judge Hiroaki Saito upheld a district court ruling acquitting the doctor, Susumu Sekine, of indecent assault performed on an incapable person.

“The possibility cannot be denied that the woman hallucinated,” the judge said, dismissing the prosecution’s appeal.

Sekine was indicted for allegedly licking the left breast of the patient immediately after she underwent an operation to remove a tumor in her right breast at the hospital May 10, 2016.

Tokyo District Court found him not guilty, saying that the patient may have been in a state of delirium as a result of being under general anesthesia, while the high court found the woman’s statements credible and sentenced the doctor to two years in prison.