Photo/Illutration Rina Gonoi, left, walks to the Fukushima District Court with her lawyer on Dec. 12. (Nobuyuki Takiguchi)

FUKUSHIMA--The Fukushima District Court on Dec. 12 found three former Ground Self-Defense Force members guilty of sexually assaulting a former colleague in a highly charged case that shook up the Defense Ministry. 

Presiding Judge Takaaki Miura sentenced the three--Shutaro Shibuya, 31, Akito Sekine, 29, and Yusuke Kimezawa, 29--to two years in prison and four years of probation for sexually assaulting Rina Gonoi, 24.

Prosecutors were seeking a sentence of two years in prison.

The three were sent to the Koriyama Branch of the Fukushima District Public Prosecutors Office for prosecution in January 2022.

In May 2022, all were found not to have committed the crime (insufficient suspicion).

However, Gonoi filed for a review at the Koriyama Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution, which voted in September 2022 that the “non-prosecution was unjustified.”

The Fukushima District Public Prosecutors Office indicted the three without arrest in March this year.

They were dismissed from the GSDF in December 2022.

According to the indictment, the three used a martial arts technique to force Gonoi onto a bed, rendering her defenseless, and then pressed their crotches against her over clothing in a training building in Betsukai, Hokkaido, in August 2021.

Each of the three denied the allegation and pleaded not guilty.

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