Posted by on December 22, 2019 5:26 am
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Categories: µ Newsjones

Takashi Aoyama/Getty

TOKYO–A civil court here handed down a landmark ruling last week in the case of freelance journalist Shiori Ito, 30, who alleged she was raped in 2015 by a Noriyuki Yamaguchi, 53, a good friend and biographer of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The court ruled Yamaguchi must pay over ¥3.3 million yen ($30,000)  in damages. 

Since Ito went public with the charges in 2017 after police efforts to pursue the case were quashed, she has become a vital symbol for the still fledgling MeToo movement in Japan; her story is a microcosm of the problems women face here in a nation where there are far too many men who share the attitudes of a Harvey Weinstein.

Yet this victory in a civil case also reopens the very ugly question of why Yamaguchi never was prosecuted for his alleged crime. The police had a warrant prepared on sexual assault charges and were planning to arrest Yamaguchi at Narita airport on June 8, 2015, but were stopped at the last minute by a high-ranking police bureaucrat known as “Prime Minister Abe’s attack dog” who then scuttled the original investigation.

Read more at The Daily Beast.