Photo/Illutration Hiroshi Watanabe, right, and Masaki Kito of the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales hold a news conference on July 12. (Nobuaki Tanaka)

Problems concerning donations and “spiritual sales tactics” have continued at the Unification Church, lawyers representing former followers said.

The religious group, known officially as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, has been in the news recently because the mother of the suspected murderer of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a member.

According to investigative sources, the suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, said he carried out the crime because he held a grudge against a religious group that had received large donations from his mother.

Yamagami said the donations led to the financial ruin of his family, and he believed that Abe was closely tied to the group, the sources said.

Lawyers who attended a July 12 news conference in Tokyo said the violence committed against Abe should never be allowed.

But they said more attention should be paid to the problems associated with the Unification Church, including money collected through its spiritual sales tactics.

“As an association that has seen the distress, tensions and difficulties in daily life experienced by former church members and their families, we have for a long time held deep concerns about such problems,” the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales said in a statement released at the July 12 news conference.

“Society is being called on once again to think about how such problems should be dealt with,” the statement said.

On the previous day, Tomihiro Tanaka, chairman of the Japanese arm of the Unification Church, confirmed that Yamagami’s mother is a member.

Tanaka also addressed issues related to the spiritual sales tactics.

“It is true that we had troubles regarding donations in the past,” he said at a news conference in Tokyo. “But since 2009, when the then chairperson issued a statement, our attitude toward donations has changed.”

The lawyers network released documents about consultations it and local consumer centers have received from individuals who bought expensive items or made large donations to the Unification Church.

For about 35 years until the end of 2021, there were 34,537 consultations in relation to monetary losses of about 123.7 billion yen ($902 million), the documents showed.

For the five-year period until 2021, about 580 consultations were held regarding about 5.4 billion yen in purchases or donations.

Masaki Kito, one of the lawyers who attended the news conference, said problems related to spiritual sales or donations continue today in relation to the Unification Church.

A woman in her 40s who asked that her name not be revealed told the news conference that her mother is still a member.

“What Yamagami did cannot be defended, but I can understand his hatred toward the church because it is capable of destroying one’s life,” she said.

She explained that she became a member in her teens due to the influence of her mother and took part in a mass wedding in 1995 when she married a South Korean man chosen for her by the church.

But she said she later divorced him because of his physical abuse, and she is no longer in contact with her mother.

“I could not consult anyone, even my friends,” she said. “There is an agony that only those who have gone through the experience can know.”

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