A woman with a mild intellectual disability who worked at a welfare workshop in Tokyo has accused the facility’s director of sexually assaulting her, including forcing her to strip naked and touching her genitals. The case highlights the difficulty of preventing abuse of people with disabilities, who may struggle to recognize what happened as assault or to be believed when they speak up.
Japanese elementary school teacher Fumiya Kosemura pleaded guilty to charges of sharing child pornography via social media, in the first hearing on his case at Nagoya District Court on Wednesday. The charges are “correct, and I’m very sorry,” said Kosemura, 37, a teacher at a public elementary school in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, who has been indicted for voyeurism and indecent assault. According to the indictment, Kosemura filmed secretly the underwear of a 7-year-old girl at a facility in Kanagawa and shared the video data within the group between January and February this year.
One in three sexual assaults against people with disabilities were committed by carers or other support staff, a Justice Ministry survey has found. The report, covering cases from 2018 to 2022, said 74 percent of victims had intellectual disabilities, including moderate, severe and mild cases, while 19 percent had developmental disabilities. Only 36.5 percent of victims with intellectual disabilities recognized they were being abused, and more than a third never reported the assaults. The ministry called for measures such as installing cameras in facilities and reducing one-on-one contact between carers and disabled individuals.
Japan’s Children and Families Agency will hold an in-person session next month to hear the opinions of junior high and high school students on a planned system for checking whether teachers have sexual crime records. Over the so-called Japanese version of Britain’s Disclosure and Barring Service, the government set up a panel of experts in April to discuss its details, and plans to draw up related ordinances and guidelines later this year and implement them on Dec. 25, 2026. Around 12 students will be selected by lottery from volunteers to participate in the upcoming hearing session at the agency.
On February 19th, the Niigata District Court handed down a sentence of 14 years in prison to a former employee of an organization, who was charged with crimes including sexually assaulting and injuring a woman with a disability while transporting her in Sanjo City. The court ruled that “he repeatedly committed the crime, taking advantage of the fact that the victim could not resist, which is despicable.”
Takuya Hosokai (44), a former employee of an NPO that supports people with disabilities, was charged with sexually assaulting and filming women with disabilities while transporting them between 2019 and the year before last. Among these incidents, he was specifically charged for sexually assaulting and injuring a woman in a parking lot in Sanjo City in December 2023.
Japanese journalist Shiori Ito, who directed an Academy Award-nominated documentary about her own sexual assault case, said Thursday that she will reedit part of the film to address allegations that the film includes unauthorized content. The documentary, “Black Box Diaries,” has been screened in over 50 overseas countries and regions since its world premiere at a film festival in January last year but not yet in Japan due to legal concerns.
Black Box Diaries,” a documentary film directed by Japanese journalist Shiori Ito, received an Academy Awards nomination for documentary feature film Thursday. Ito, a symbolic figure in the #MeToo movement in Japan, is the first Japanese nominee in the category.
The suspect (71) arrested on suspicion of non-consensual sexual intercourse, is a driver for a disability support facility in Koganei City, Tokyo, who is suspected of sexually assaulting a female user in her 20s on the bus he was driving in July this year. The suspect denied the charges, saying, “I did nothing obscene.” The woman claims to have been a victim of similar assaults multiple times, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is investigating her for other crimes as well.
The suspect (71) arrested on suspicion of non-consensual sexual intercourse, is a driver for a disability support facility in Koganei City, Tokyo, who is suspected of sexually assaulting a female user in her 20s on the bus he was driving in July this year.
Barrier Free Japan