This is a story about a documentary I saw on TV last year.
The opening footage shows four young men and their families heading to a courthouse. They are facing charges for a group assault that occurred several years ago, and they are on their way to hear the verdict. The incident allegedly took place on September 16, 2001, in a park near Gotemba Station. That day, a high school girl living in the neighborhood returned home late at night and complained to her parents that she had been brutally assaulted by a group of teenage boys she knew. According to the girl's testimony: - She ran into the boys at the station after school, and they forced her to call home to say she would be returning late. - Immediately after, they grabbed her by both arms and dragged her to a nearby park. - They talked there for about an hour before she was subjected to a group assault.
Naturally, her parents called the police. Based on the girl's testimony, the police arrested 10 teenage boys and high school students. Under harsh interrogation, the boys confessed one after another, and written confessions matching the girl's account were produced.
However, all of the boys subsequently retracted their statements. They began claiming that the confessions had been coerced by the police and that they had no recollection of the incident whatsoever. Behind this retraction were the desperate investigations conducted by the boys' families. Through their efforts, it was discovered that all the boys had solid alibis at the time of the incident: - One of the boys was at his part-time job, and there was a record on his time card. - The other boys were at a family restaurant at the exact same time, and the staff remembered them.
However, the police completely dismissed this, claiming that the families had conspired to fabricate evidence, and the boys were sent to criminal trial. Eventually, however, decisive evidence was found. The call logs on the girl's mobile phone showed that a few minutes after calling her home, she had called a different number. (At that exact time, she supposedly should have been dragged to the park with both arms held.) The person she called was a company employee living in a different town. He testified that he had met the girl through a dating site and that he had been on a date with her on the night of the incident. Furthermore, he stated that the girl had even told him, "I'm going to make up some excuse for being late getting home."
This testimony instantly destroyed the credibility of the girl's story. It strongly pointed toward a wrongful prosecution forced by the police, but then... something unprecedented happened.
Suddenly, the girl changed her testimony: - She claimed the assault actually happened a week earlier than her original date—on September 9. - She had lied about the date of the incident because she didn't want to cause trouble for the salaryman she went on a date with, but the assault definitely happened. - Being dragged to the park against her will was also a lie; she was happy to be approached and went along willingly. - The time of the assault was also different from her initial statement.
Normally, such careless contradictions would make it impossible to sustain a trial. Yet, incredibly, the court approved this unprecedented amendment of the charges! As a result, all the alibis the boys' families had worked so desperately to gather were rendered completely useless...
However, it was later revealed that September 9 was a day when an assault would have been virtually impossible: - Due to a typhoon, it had rained intermittently from the morning, and at the time of the alleged incident, it was raining about 3 millimeters per hour. - This rainfall was recorded by multiple rain gauges near the scene. - A person who had a traffic accident near the site at the exact same time testified that conditions were such that going outside without an umbrella was impossible.
Yet the girl, who supposedly had been pushed down onto the park's lawn, had previously testified, "I don't remember my clothes getting wet, and I wasn't using an umbrella." The TV program even conducted an experiment to verify this, demonstrating that spending an hour outside in 2-to-3 millimeters of rain without an umbrella would soak one's clothes thoroughly, and falling onto a lawn would leave clothes covered in grass. The boys maintained that they had alibis for this day as well, arguing that the entire incident was completely fabricated.
This brings us back to the beginning. The boys, who were high school students at the time of their arrest, were now young men in their twenties. They had been forced to drop out of high school, were unable to find jobs because of the incident, and had wasted several years of their lives. "But that ends today. There's no way the court will believe a girl's testimony that lacks even a shred of credibility. An acquittal is certain." Convinced of this, the young men faced the trial.
The result... a prison sentence of two years. The presiding judge (who happened to be a woman) completely ignored the boys' alibis. Regarding the rain, she dismissed it with a nonsensical reason: "Just because it was recorded by nearby rain gauges doesn't necessarily mean it was raining at the actual site." (During the program, a meteorology expert expressed outrage, saying, "They are ignoring scientific evidence.")
With zero physical evidence, the judge relied on what was virtually the prosecution's only weapon—the boys' written confessions—ruling them "consistent" and handing down the verdict. However, those confessions had been created *before* the girl changed her story, and they differed from her "amended" testimony in several fundamental ways, starting with the very date of the incident...
After the verdict, families chased the bus carrying the young men off to prison, screaming and crying... And that was the end of it.
No matter how you look at it, it seems obvious: a selfish, foolish woman spun a sloppy fabrication, and the police, eager to conduct a lazy extortion-style investigation, went behind the scenes to pull strings with the prosecution and the courts just to save face... Realizing that this is the current state of our country's judicial system leaves a particularly bitter aftertaste. Well, all one can do is pray not to end up in the same position...
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