Criminal Psychologist Says Defendant in Assault Trial Has “mild intellectual disability”

Fro Abema Times via Yahoo! Japan

August 20 26

SAPPORO – Late on the night of October 25, 2024, a 20-year-old university student was assaulted by a group of people in a park in Ebetsu, Hokkaido, and lost his life. For approximately two hours, he was punched and kicked more than 100 times. He was stripped naked, and his hair was even set on fire. Most of the six men and women involved in the attack were teenagers. Moreover, many of them did not even know the victim.

The alleged ringleader, defendant Yuto Kawaguchi, was 18 at the time of the crime. In court, testimony focused on his upbringing. A medical expert who assessed him testified that he had “an IQ of 58, indicating a mild intellectual disability, and mild hearing impairment.”

While his two older brothers excelled at baseball, Kawaguchi reportedly struggled with feelings of inferiority. He was also at one point advised to attend a special-needs school. Kawaguchi’s mother said, “I wanted him to play baseball. I had heard that he wanted to go to Koshien [the national high school baseball championship], so I left him in a regular class.”

Kawaguchi dropped out of high school after his first year. At home, his mother had also attempted suicide, and testimony indicated that Kawaguchi was the one who supported her at the time. His mother said, “I was in a mental state where we never knew when I might die, and Yuto took care of me the whole time.”

The medical expert analyzed the incident as a case in which Kawaguchi’s usual behavioral pattern emerged “within a ‘group mode’ in which he relieved his feelings of inferiority through violence.”

On August 7, 2026, approximately one year and ten months after the incident, the Sapporo District Court described the crime as “abusive and torturous” and handed Kawaguchi a life sentence, emphasizing the brutality of the offense. Kawaguchi has appealed the verdict, arguing that he disagrees with the judgment.

Criminal psychologist Yasuyuki Deguchi discussed Kawaguchi’s family environment, saying, “It’s not the case that family circumstances are unrelated to many crimes and delinquent behavior. They are involved.” However, he added, “Does that mean that someone becomes a criminal because those circumstances existed? No, that’s not how it works. People can use those circumstances to rationalize their own failures or criminal behavior. Once they start making excuses such as, ‘This is what my life was like, so I couldn’t help it,’ their criminal behavior or delinquency can become impossible to stop.”

“For rehabilitation, the most important thing is basically to properly acknowledge what you yourself did and consider how you can apologize to the other person,” he continued.

He explained, “He is attributing the cause to his family. He is attributing the cause to his own inherent qualities. As long as he continues looking for the cause there, he isn’t turning his attention toward himself. Unless that situation changes, it is only natural to think that he will need a long period of time to rehabilitate.”

He went on to describe his experience working at Miyagi Prison in Sendai, a prison that houses serious offenders from across Japan: “It is a prison where many people serving life sentences are held. While conducting various interviews and psychological analyses there, I found that the type of person who is more likely to turn their life around is someone who turns their attention toward themselves.

“Otherwise, even 30 or 40 years after committing a crime, they are still saying, ‘That was bad,’ ‘That person was at fault,’ or ‘The company was at fault.’ They continue to use those kinds of explanations. For people like that, genuine rehabilitation is extremely difficult.”