In a shocking turnabout for a Japanese court, a man accused of a crime by a woman has been declared innocent after it emerged police just made up their report which stated “he enjoyed watching peeping porn” and “seeing that women aroused my animal instincts.”
In 2008 the Yokohama man was using a Tokyo escalator when he made the mistake of using his mobile phone behind a woman.
She saw him “looking at pictures” on his phone and concluded he was engaged in some form of voyeuristic trespass against her person, and reported him.
He agreed to go along with police for questioning, and by the time they had finished they had an interrogation report which stated “his hobbies include watching voyeuristic pornography” and “seeing the woman aroused his animal instincts.”
The man was charged and convicted of voyeurism, his sentence being a 300,000 yen fine.
According to reports from 2010, by then it was established the officer responded to the man’s protestations of innocence by shouting at him to “quit your lying” and writing his confession for him, whilst prosecutors chose to ignore the fact no pictures were ever found on his phone.
Over 5 years after his arrest the courts finally overturned the guilty verdict, finding that “on investigation it transpired the investigator had produced a report at variance with the facts.”
For this “illegal investigation” the courts ordered police to pay the man 1.1 million yen in compensation.
Japanese news reports covering such crimes typically include darling extracts from the confession of the suspect – though in light of cases such as this it seems not unlikely that an uncertain proportion of them are actually the work of police either writing whatever they feel like or coercing from their prisoner with the threat of pre-trial detention longer than the likely sentence.
Amongst actual Japanese there is outrage that police – and the man’s accuser – got off so lightly:
“The woman is innocent?”
“She should pay compensation too!”
“Unbelievable that fabricating a police report does not result in a prison sentence.”
“This happened in Japan!?”
“5 years of being dragged through something like this and all he gets is a paltry million yen.”
“Just hiring the lawyer must have cost more.”
“Just making out that a man is probably a sex criminal because he watches pornography is pretty desperate stuff to put in a police report.”
“Just using a mobile on an escalator gets you convicted as a sex criminal!?”
“If you don’t get a lawyer they will completely make up their report. There are some very bad cops out there, accusations like this are the tip of the iceberg.”
“This is routine for them. They write the confession they want, then make you cross out the bits you claim not to say and sign it. They don’t even see anything wrong with it.”
“He should be getting 30 million for being embroiled in something like this.”
“Not only do the police not get prosecuted, the woman’s testimony is unconditionally believed over that of the man?”
“How badly does Japan coddle its women?”
“No consequences at all for falsely accusing him of this, how nice for the woman.”
“Japanese police are just totally useless…”
“It’s like they are just admitting it because they can’t get away with it this time. How barbarous would foreign countries think Tokyo’s courts? And what does that sum say about how seriously we take our democracy?”
“This woman should be made to wear trousers for the rest of her life!”
“Without dealing with our rotten police force and the ability of women to fabricate any charges against men they like and still be believed it is hard to see an end to cases like this.”
Que bien que las autoridades se dieran cuenta de su error y le dieron una indemnización en otros lugar le hubieran dicho usted perdone y nomas.
so much police incompetence well it’s not just in japan but they sure have some ridiculous cases
Lo bueno es que se dieron cuenta de su error las autoridades y le pagaron una buena cantidad de dinero, en otra parte no lo ubieran hecho solo un perdone usted y es todo.
Before people start to say otherwise:
This is a terrible situation and women who falsely accuse men of groping should definitely not get away with it. Even if she wasn’t intentionally trying to frame him, it’s wrong that people all assumed he was up to no good, and the culture that automatically assumes that men are pervs and gropers is wrong and sexist.
That said, this still doesn’t excuse the minority of men who do perform this type of behavior, and just as there’s only a tiny fraction of men who are awful groping molesters, there’s also only a tiny fraction of women who are evil sadistic false-accusers, so let’s please avoid painting either gender with a broad brush, okay?
True egality is about making sure that neither of these types of awful stereotypes are further perpetuated, to ensure that the culture that allows people to get hurt based on stereotypes disappears for good. Feminism AND masculism should both strive for this goal, and it’s not a matter of which gender is “better” than the other.
3D is really awful.
last summer i met an acquaintance,we talked and after a while i asked him about the three scars i saw on his shoulder,he told me that his girlriend routinely beat him and at one point she stabbed him three times on the shoulder,also when i asked if he did try to stop her when she attacked him he replied that he was just taking those beatings without leaving her or call the police over the stab wounds she inflicted on him.
lately another friend told me a similar story,minus the stabbing,he had a depressive episode.
Real pussy is awful because your friend is a moron with a psycho girlfriend. Thanks for the heads up.
my friend works as a bartender to pay for his history degree as he wants to work as a teacher and is the kindest person i know,sadly sometimes he’s a dormat but among my friend he’s the one who work the hardet veing a working tudent and all that,alo what’s sad is that all our other friends made fun of him for having a crazy girlfriend and getting beat up,i was the only one who supported and tried to help him