Japan’s New Sex Crime Laws Are Still Not Enough to Protect Victims from Injustice
Kimberly Swan
People are supposed to feel safe in their homelands — to live without fear of criminals who act with impunity. So when a person gets attacked, the victim expects justice to be on their side. However, in Japan, sex crimes are handled differently.
In 2014, one in 15 women reported being raped at some point, according to a survey conducted by the Cabinet Office of the central government.
The police and courts define rape differently than in other countries, pursuing cases only when there are signs of both physical force and self-defense and discouraging complaints when either the assailant or victim have been drinking. Japan’s rape laws make no mention of consent; date rape being a foreign concept and education about sexual violence is minimal. However, alcohol can be used as a date rape drug, so it’s not strange that the assailant and victim would both be drinking when the complaint was made.
The Justice Ministry’s statistics show that even when rapists are prosecuted and convicted, they sometimes serve no prison time; about one in 10 receive only suspended sentences. Even so, more than two-thirds of the women who said they were raped admitted they never told anyone, and almost four percent of them went to the police. In the United States however, about a third of rapes are reported to the police.
This discourages victims to come forward since they think that their rapists wouldn’t be convicted if they made a compliant.
Shiori Ito, a rape victim survivor, denied the charges. And after a two-month investigation, the prosecutors dropped the case just like that. But that didn’t stop Ito from speaking out.
“I know if I didn’t talk about it, this horrible climate of sexual assault will never change,” Ito said.
It’s very important for victims to speak out. It encourages other victims to speak out, since people usually are too scared to be the only ones. Also, the country and police can no longer ignore a crime if so many people are speaking out about it. Forcing their hand to take action.
A woman under the pseudonym Elizabeth, was raped by a colleague while working as an assistant language teacher on the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme, according to an article written by Megha Wadhwa and Ben Stubbings.
She went to the police and said she felt degraded.
“First, I felt that an entire day of questioning, which included the visit to my apartment, was unnecessary,” Elizabeth explained. “My story isn’t that long or complicated; questioning could’ve last a couple hours at most.
She also felt victimized all over again due to their line of questioning and their lack of empathy.
“Second, the pictures taken of me were pointless and traumatizing. They took pictures of me with my bloody underwear and the used condom my rapist used. It was humiliating,” she said.
Then Elizabeth explained that the police asked ridiculous questions like, “Have you ever had anal sex or anything put up your butt?” and “If a woman is unconscious and her friend/boyfriend/husband has sex with her, do you consider it rape?”
They didn’t have a concept of “unconscious is unable to consent,” according to Elizabeth.
“Lastly, I thought it was entirely inappropriate and victim-blaming that they offered me advice: ‘If you don’t want to get raped, you shouldn’t invite men in your apartment.’” she said. “They made me feel as if it were completely my fault that I was raped.”
Not only was she sexually assaulted and survived the trauma, but the police who were supposed to help victims made things worse for her. This only gives victims more reasons to not go to the police.
In a 2017 article by Tomoko Otake, Japan’s new rape laws now includes forced anal and oral sex, meaning men can be rape victims as well. It was previously limited to only vaginal penetration by a penis.
Minimum sentences have increased up to five years from three now too. Authorities can now prosecute offenses such as rape and indecent assault even if the victim does not come forward to file a formal complaint.
The law also states that adults who take advantage of their custodial roles as guardians to sexually abuse children under age 18 will face rape and indecent assault charges, and prosecution in such cases will be exempt from establishing a prerequisite of “violence and intimidation” to convict sex offenders.
Although I am glad that Japan is finally stepping up their game in updating the laws, these changes are not enough to provide justice to the victims.
Serving only five years in prison is not a proper sentence. It should either be for life or at least 25 years or more.
Japan still needs to make more adjustments for its people.
