English Tutor Charged with Indecent Filming and Inappropriate Touching of Multiple High School Girls

The man seemed to be targeting moments when he was alone one-on-one with female students. During individual lessons, he is alleged to have touched a female student’s body multiple times from behind.

On July 11, the Matsudo Police Station in Chiba Prefecture arrested Keisuke Hisasue (52), a company executive living in the city, on suspicion of forcible indecency. Hisasue is the owner and instructor of an English conversation school in Matsudo City. It is alleged that over about a year and a half, from July 2021 to January 2023, he repeatedly committed indecent acts against A, a female student who was a high school girl in her teens at the time.

“The crime appears to have occurred while Hisasue was conducting a one-on-one lesson with A in the classroom. While A was reading English aloud, Hisasue is said to have put his hand inside her clothes from behind and touched her chest and lower body. Moreover, he reportedly recorded the acts on his cellphone. In December 2023, A reported the case to the prefectural police’s ‘Sex Crime Hotline,’ saying she had been victimized and filmed dozens of times, which led to the discovery of the incident,” said a reporter from a national newspaper’s social affairs department.

Keisuke Hisasue, who has studied abroad in the United States and opened an English conversation school in the early 2000s, admitted to the charges during police questioning and reportedly made the following statement:

“I wanted to satisfy my sexual desires. I felt excitement and a thrill of guilt when touching the bodies of women other than my wife. I committed similar acts with several other students as well.”

Taihei Ogawa, a former Kanagawa Prefectural Police detective and crime journalist, commented:

“This is an extremely malicious crime that exploited the teacher and student relationship. From the student’s perspective, there is a psychological pressure not to oppose what the teacher says, making it difficult to resist. The suspect may have escalated and repeated his actions because the students did not resist.

Most teachers and instructors work hard with the children’s best interests in mind. However, it is also true that sex crimes such as secret filming and indecent acts continue to occur in educational settings like schools and cram schools. In many cases, as with this suspect, the offenses are repeated. It may be necessary to impose stricter penalties, such as immediate imprisonment without suspended sentences, for teachers or instructors who take advantage of their privileged position to commit offenses against students.”

The government is accelerating efforts to respond to the frequent sex crimes in educational settings by introducing a “Japanese version of DBS” (a system for employers to check the sex crime history of job applicants and current employees) by the next fiscal year.