Family cover-ups and media silence helped enable showbiz guru and sexual deviant Johnny Kitagawa to abuse perhaps hundreds of boys over several decades, a special team investigating the allegations said.

The close to 70-page report released by the team on Aug. 29 confirmed rumors about sexual abuse that have long been swirling around Johnny & Associates Inc., a major talent agency in Japan.

The report said family members knew what Kitagawa, the agency’s founder, was doing to the young idols, but they did nothing to stop it.

Instead, Mary Yasuko Fujishima, Kitagawa’s older sister who served as vice president under Kitagawa and became company chair after he died in 2019, covered up the sexual abuse.

The report said she was likely aware from the mid-1960s, shortly after Johnny & Associates was established, of her brother’s obsession with young males.

Fujishima died in 2021.

The report also said Fujishima’s daughter, Julie Keiko Fujishima, was aware that several boys had accused her uncle of sexual abuse in weekly magazines by the time she became a board member of the company.

Julie Keiko Fujishima failed to fulfill her responsibility to conduct an investigation into the allegations after she became company president in 2020, the report said.

The team said she should step down from the post to allow the agency to make a fresh start.

Kitagawa’s power and influence in the industry were other factors that allowed him to continue molesting boys over such a long period, the team said.

Many of the victims were members of “Johnny’s Jr.,” an umbrella term for pre-debut idols, and Kitagawa basically controlled all aspects of their careers as entertainers, the team’s report said.

Because of that authority, the victims found it extremely difficult to reject his sexual advances.

“There was an authority structure in place that likely led the young men who became victims to think that their standing would improve if they obeyed (Kitagawa’s sexual demands) and that it would be hurt if they rejected them,” said psychiatrist Nozomu Asukai, a member of the investigative team.

The report also noted that Kitagawa gave cash to many of the victims the day after an act of sexual abuse, which likely instilled a sense of guilt among them and allowed Kitagawa to control the relationship.

That made it even more difficult for the victims to report about the abuse they had suffered.

The team also pointed the finger of blame at the mass media for keeping quiet about what was going on at the talent agency.

Mainstream media organizations avoided extensive coverage of the topic likely out of fear the agency would deny them access to its many stars and entertainers.

The report said the media’s failure to widely report on the sexual abuse suspicions allowed Johnny & Associates to not only brush off the allegations but also strengthened the agency’s tendency to cover up the acts of the founder.

“The talent agency might have changed its response if the mass media had reported” the allegations, Makoto Hayashi, a lawyer who headed the team, said at a news conference.

The team was met with skepticism when it was formed in June because it was established by Johnny & Associates and said it would not delve into the extent of Kitagawa’s abuse.

But its report was applauded by Mobeen Azhar, the BBC journalist who was in charge of putting together the documentary “Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop.”

The documentary, released in March, interviewed victims of Kitagawa and prompted many others to come forward about being abused.

“I welcome the findings and acknowledge them as a significant step in the right direction in the movement for justice for survivors of abuse,” Azhar said in an email to The Asahi Shimbun.

But he added: “I believe the abuse was not only about the crimes of Johnny Kitagawa but also about a culture of impunity. We can no longer sweep these issues under the carpet. Believe survivors of abuse and hold those who abuse their power accountable.”

(This article was written by Amane Shimazaki, Rina Horikoshi, Takumi Terui, Bunna Takizawa and Senior Staff Writer Maki Okubo in Tokyo and Gakushi Fujiwara in London.)