Photo/Illutration Rina Gonoi, left, walks to the Fukushima District Court with her lawyer on June 29. (Nobuyuki Takiguchi)

FUKUSHIMA--Three men dismissed from the Ground Self-Defense Force for alleged indecent assault against a female colleague pleaded innocent to the charges at their first trial hearing at the district court here.

Shutaro Shibuya, 30, Akito Sekine, 29, and Yusuke Kimezawa, 29, are accused of sexually assaulting a former female member, who went public with her complaint and requested a further investigation. 

According to the indictment, the trio used martial arts techniques to force Rina Gonoi, 23, to the floor of a training exercise building in Hokkaido during a drinking session on Aug. 3, 2021, and repeatedly pressed their crotches against her.

All four were stationed at the GSDF’s Camp Koriyama in Fukushima Prefecture at the time of the alleged assault.

“It is true that I shook my hips, but I did so simply to get a laugh,” Shibuya told the court hearing on June 29.

Sekine was equally adamant, saying, “I did not engage in any behavior like shaking my hips.”

Kimezawa maintained it was true he placed his body over Gonoi, “but I did not touch her.”

Prosecutors said Shibuya used martial arts techniques to render Gonoi defenseless at the instruction of his superior.

They added that Shibuya repeatedly pressed his crotch against her to elicit laughs from other GSDF members who were at the drinking session.

Sekine and Kimezawa engaged in similar acts after their superior explained the martial arts techniques, prosecutors said.

During an examination of a witness, Gonoi said: “I thought there was no way I wanted them to touch my body. But as my bosses were present, the mood wasn’t one where I could say no.”

To the three defendants, she pleaded: “Please think about what it would be like if someone close to you had the same experience. I want you to feel sorry for what you did from the bottom of your hearts and atone for your crime.”

Gonoi left the GSDF in June 2022.

During the hearing, Gonoi said she quit because she felt she couldn’t act on the sexual attack as long as she was in the GSDF.

“I thought I had to leave my job for my voice to be heard,” Gonoi said. “I joined the Ground Self-Defense Force as I wanted to compete as a judo player in the Olympics.”

Gonoi went on to say that as she suffers from flashbacks from the assault, “I can’t wholly enjoy judo which I love.”

In May 2022, the Koriyama branch of the prosecutors’ office decided not to press charges against the three on grounds of insufficient evidence.

But prosecutors were forced to conduct a new investigation after a prosecution inquest committee in Koriyama in September 2022 found that the decision not to indict the trio was inappropriate.

Prosecutors the following March decided to indict the three men while not taking them into custody.

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