Hikikomori Gets 20 Years for Killing Sister, Blames Asperger’s
- Categories: Japan, News
- Date: Aug 2, 2012 00:20 JST
- Tags: Courts, Crime, Hikikomori, Law, Mental Illness, Murder, Osaka, Otaku
A hikikomori who murdered the sister who had helped support his 30 years of reclusion has been given a 20 year prison sentence for murder, with the judge ruling that the 16-year sentence sought by the prosecution was too lenient and dismissing the defence’s arguments that it was all the fault of Asperger’s syndrome out of hand.
The unemployed 42-year-old man had lived as a hikikomori with the support of his older sister, then 46, for some 30 years, but started to blame his sister for his failure to end his reclusive dependency.
His unfounded resentment towards her culminated in him brutally stabbing her to death with a kitchen knife, resulting in him being arrested and tried for murder.
His lawyer rather optimistically sought a suspended sentence and probation instead of jail, arguing that he could not be held wholly responsible for the killing as his condition – he supposedly suffers congenital Asperger’s syndrome, a mental condition similar to autism and characterised by extremes of introversion – caused him anger management problems.
The Osaka court judge presiding was having none of it, and in fact thought the 16 year sentence the prosecution sought was too light, and sentenced him to 20 instead:
“After he had bodily and financially exhausted his elder sister, he irrationally opted to murder her.
The accused has displayed insufficient remorse for his crime and should he re-enter society there is concern he might re-offend in similar fashion.”
However, the judge did acknowledge his condition as a mitigating factor – although this merely worked against him as the judge suspected he would be unable to cope alone after killing the only person willing to take care of him:
“Your family does not want you living with them so you have nowhere to go, there is much worry about you re-offending. Keeping you imprisoned as long as the law allows will help protect public order.”
The defence plans to appeal the verdict, calling it “regrettable” that the judge did not buy their arguments that it was all the fault of Asperger’s syndrome and that he should be released, and chastising the judge for “basing a verdict on prejudice.”
Legal experts are nonplussed as well, complaining that “it is usual for the involvement of a mental illness to result in a reduction in sentencing, so there is a certain sense that the verdict is out of place.”
A mental illness charity also butted in to criticise the verdict:
“He did not regret his crime insufficiently, he merely did not understand what he was being told. Our worst fears about the lack of understanding of lay judges [a quasi-jury] have come to pass.”
However, as many mental health professionals do not even consider Asperger’s an “illness” and there is apparently as yet no history of it turning “sufferers” into sororicidal maniacs, even fellow sufferers may be none too sympathetic at their supposedly benign condition being stained with the stigma of bloody murder.
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1sts hoho
oh no...
damn aspies are quick...
you ruined my dreams..
I'm an Aspie.
And I don't think it's inherently right to kill a human being under any circumstances. It's no calculus.
Then again, was the guy diagnosed as an Aspie by PROFESSIONALS?
There are 36.6 reasons why one shouldn't even think about the last part.
The maximum term here is 20 years, so I expect some mitigating circumstances (presence of affect?) are already taken account of. But the intent displayed in the explanations is very disturbing, and yet the defence opted to try the illness plea. A game of cops and robbers on the part of the defendant? Or all in a day's work for the jury? He probably should go to jail, maybe even for 20 years. But not by means of such a poorly justified verdict.
Well, I mentioned the last part because a lot of people like to bullshit with Aspergers. There are still too many people who proclaim themselves as Aspies after only a few readings and some questionnaires. This syndrome doesn't work that way; it needs to be diagnosed by professionals who know what they do.
Still, I need to re-iterate that a person being an Aspie should not EVER be grounds for a plea. That's like claiming that everyone with ADD is prone to murder. These are high functioning psychological problems that are not as extreme as, say, schizophrenia.
The wording of this article is a little unnerving near the end, even though it may be out of entirely good intentions. Don't let it make you feel bad.
AS doesn't make you predisposed to be a murderer just as water being present in cancer cells doesn't make it generally oncogenic. AS may count as a behavior modifier, or something that invites an unusual reaction to it, that could in turn meet with a counter - and such technicalities are in principle important to the judgment process. We don't know the details here, but it appears unlikely that it was a factor in this case, they knew each other well. He was also unsympathetic toward her lot, that tells you it wasn't entirely on impulse. So it's not the sickness part, it's the situation part that matters.
On a side note, while one condition does not preclude another, from the point of view of a suffering person, the clinical classification of what is going on with him is not of prime importance. This guy wasn't on welfare and couldn't work either, so it may tell you something was on that prevented him from seeking help.
The problem is not the justification, it is that the judge even needed to justify the sentence.
He wasn't going to be accused of rightist tendencies maybe.
Asperger's this guy has something a lot worse then that.
asperger's is not a get out of free card hope jap jails are as bad as american prisons.
They're worse in the sense of amenities. There is no entertainment (TV, weight rooms etc.)
You sleep on a futon when your told to and you may not sit on the bedding during the day. If you sit you may only sit seiza (formal kneeling position). You may not speak unless spoken to by a guard and may not speak to any other prisoner.
Your food is rationed by strict calorie count so you only get enough to sustain you, no extras or seconds.
Japanese prison system is not designed to coddle prisoners but to teach them discipline and work.
You spend the day making furniture or clothes.
When they are released most stay out of prison for obvious reasons.
But at least the showers are okay, right?
That's nothing to be proud of if you're a first or even second world country.
Actually it is something to be proud of. It is a PRISON. They clearly are given the basic amenities and nothing more.
That is how a prison should function.
@Pyrolight
I disagree you either treat them as human beings and reform them or you put them down but protracted torment has no place in a civilized society.
Prisoners often commit suicide in Japan. Harsh methods are effective, but so are soft ones. It depends on the person to be reformed and how much justice one wants.
Wow, that treatment is just disgusting.
Remember, most prisoners aren't vicious murderers
(and even then that would go a little bit too far).
Seriously, why don't they just hack off the hand of thieves, they're not too far away from what moslems consider "justice" anyway.
(If coquette's describtion is acurate, of course)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky once said you can judge a society by the way it treats its prisoners.
You sure can and the fact is what is said by the American prison system is far worse then was is being said above.
They should hack off the hands of thieves and castrate rapists. You're stupid bleeding heart liberalism is exactly why none of us are safe walking around Baltimore & Detroit, at night.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Doesn't the bible say:
You will be judged by how you treat the Least of you?
triti
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"prisoners are not human" - sankaku complex, 2012
That's his "reason?" Shoot the bastard and be done with it. Sister supported him and then he kills her. Fuck this guy.
That's just the problem, the sister wasn't doing him any favors, people like that are called enablers.
If he hadn't been supported, he would have been forced to find a job and interact with real life.
Too shallow. If it was that simple, there would be less posters on sankaku. And, his full social condition unknown, there's no talking of him being 'forced', because it may turn out to be like trying to run off a broken leg.
Something's been preventing him from escaping the position that was wearing him down, apparently, if it ended as it did. But nobody cared till somebody died again.
What I noticed is he become a hiki at 12.
Shouldn't some sorta of social services intervened at that stage when he disappeared from school?
Yes the US has it's flaws but if a 12 year old stops showing up at a school and locks themselves in their room it is something of concern and the government will intervene if necessary.
I think this is just the latest symptom in a broken system that offers little to no help for mental illness as this seems to happen a little to often in Japan.
@char
His parents may have moved him on a home schooling program. And not all countries mandate high school education.
Your last sentence is just you pretending to know what you're talking about, when you don't have a fucking clue. I mean, we won't be needing cops in the first place if everyone is psychic.
She may have been enabling his hikikomorism but that doesn't justify killing her. The proper way to deal with the situation would've been more along the lines of him saying "hey, sis, you're an enabler, cut it out and help me get some work instead" or somesuch.
That will be letting him off to easily. He'd probably kill himself anyway since no one is going to support him
He could post on sankaku.
???????????????????????
I was wondering why that Sankaku poster disappeared suddenly...
LOL~
She supported me but then she keep pestering me to find a job. She has outlived her usefulness.
So, shoot yourself and be done with it, asswipe.
I have Asperger's syndrome, so what. I don't suffer much because of it, except that I can't get any pussy.
Keanu Reeves have Asperger's too.
That explains alot about his soulless acting.
He wasn't doing it for money then?
Well, 'Neo' was a protagonist insert at any rate, so he shouldn't act too much.
Asperger's is a spectrum disorder. Some are highly functional in society while others are not. You can't compare yourself to others because you may not be the same case as someone else.
You can't fail in life more miserably than this........
The article didn't have much to say about his motive. Why exactly did he blame her? What was she doing to him that would justify his belief she stunted his chances of separating from her? What happened on the day of her death? Whence the tension? As such, all the attention goes to the justification of the verdict, which is scary and illogical. In context, calling upon the remorse factor tells you the judges, for whatever reason, didn't even try to understand the situation, and I see no remorse in the explanation of their own contribution to the matter, e.g. basing their verdicts on a family popularity poll. The family backdrop tells you that he effectively decided to get rid of his - as they claim - sole source of income. So there were matters (subjectively) more important than that the day the murder took place. What were they?
At least most people with autism and asperger's syndrome have the decency to blame themselves for their mistakes. I wish those that do blame their disabilities would quit giving others like us a bad name.
It's a slippery slope.
His actions are his own, and certainly he should be punished for them.
But the condition isn't his fault.
If I had to break it down, I'd suggest that while autism doesn't provide an alibi, it does provide a motive. He should blame himself for what he did, not what he is.
So.. A shut in, blames her sister for sponsoring his life, kills her, gets shut in again?
I think it would be real punishment to cast him out as a homeless..
i was thinking the same thing
Then other people would have to deal with a violent schizophrenic hassling them for money.
The only solutions are jail,place him in a mental institution,or execution.
That's still unacceptable, killing your sister after taking care of your for 30 years is just pure unjustified bullshit. Asperger's syndrome my ass, it mainly just makes you unsociable, and there's no reason to kill your sister over it.
Then again, maybe I'm just biased towards this guy because my little sister is gone too.
My deepest condolences.
"Breed crows and they'll gouge your eyes out"
you can feel sorry if want. but there are far worst articles bout this subject. think they have them on here somehwere. Think one of them nearly kille dthe whole family becuase they cut him off from the internet or credit card usage. The mother of another jumpe dout of a 3rd or 2nd story building to escape from being stabbed to death.
Exactly, why would I kill my own money source......oh wait she must have told me to find a job, that ungrateful bitch.
I guess it is time for her to die then.
"The accused has displayed insufficient remorse for his crime"
One of the main effects of Aspergers is a lack of emotional comprehension and the ability to feel sympathy for others.
Just because you feel that his condition is relevant, doesn't mean it wasn't a factor in this incident.
No matter how long he is imprisoned for, or if your wishes for blood thirsty revenge are taken into consideration, his sister is never coming back.
Asperger's is called a 'high functioning' mental illness and is sometimes not even recognized by certain professionals for a reason. That is, it doesn't impair your judgment nearly as much as you make it sound. They are not mentally retarded. They are quite aware of something so basic as killing people is wrong (at least as far as civilized society is concerned) and that there are consequences for it. You are basically insulting everyone else who have properly diagnosed Aspergers. Shame. This asshole has no right or basis to 'hide' behind Aspergers and demand a free get out of jail card.
I know a good many people who suffer Aspergers (hell, I myself do) and I can tell you it works nothing of the sort. Asperger blocks or redirects a good bunch of basic emotions, causing those suffering it to appear "weird" or "strange" to others because they cannot feel quite the right way, if there is such a thing. Complex emotions often are not processed/understoof at all. This creates some unusual behaviours and makes other people less likely to talk with them, causing unsocialisation. In more severe cases sufferers of Asperger become depressed because of that.
There is however absolutely no way that Asperger causes a total emotional deafness and claiming that it's responsible for a person to kill someone because they simply don't feel anything due to it is an outright lie.
I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that this guy makes all the other people genuinely diagnosed with Aspergers look bad.
It's like using "Autism" as a defense online, it shouldn't work like that.
I wonder if he has to do hard labor while in prison because maybe then he'd understand how much his sister gave up for him
@08:12 02/08/2012
Why people with AS and not, say, people using defense in court? Is it that having a disease makes one a member of an organization of fellow sufferers?
@22:11 02/08/2012
Easy there, I was just keeping to the discussion's context.
What you just described is the trait of a psychopath, not someone with aspergers.
How about Japan is just a sick country full of weak minded beta males.