A 27-year-old office worker arrested for indecent acts, including touching the buttocks of a woman in her twenties… Psychology as seen from “Stress and Reason

Stress is the cause” is easy for him to say.

The man came down the stairs, not nodding his head but scurrying around the area. Even when he noticed the cameras of the press, he stared at us without changing his expression.

By February 27, a company employee was arrested for following a woman on the street and repeatedly committing indecent acts.

The suspect arrested is company employee Shundo Tochinai, 27. According to investigators, in January this year, Tochinai saw a woman in her 20s on her way home on a street near a station in Nerima Ward, Tokyo, where the crime took place, and followed her for about 500 meters. He is suspected of approaching her from behind without being noticed, and committing indecent acts such as touching her buttocks. Tochinai is believed to have been intoxicated on the day of the incident, and he admitted to the police that he was under stress at work and could not suppress his rationality,” said a reporter of a national newspaper.

The arrest rate for so-called “molestation” crimes has not decreased at all. Therefore, with the revision of the Penal Code in ’23 and the establishment of “non-consensual obscenity,” the penalty tends to be heavier than before. Recently, there have been cases of arrest and prison sentences, even for first-time offenders.

In May 2012, the Tokyo District Court sentenced an unemployed man to four years in prison after he was convicted of non-consensual sexual intercourse for touching the buttocks of a 15-year-old high school girl on a private railway train on her way to school. When the man was arrested, he stated that he had repeatedly committed molestation about 50 times to relieve stress. At the trial, he admitted to molestation,

He apologized to the victim on the grounds that “at the time of the crime, I could not control my stress and desire, and I could not think of the victim’s feelings.

He apologized to the victim, but the presiding judge said, “I was not doing it to relieve myself of stress,

The judge stated, “Self-centered self-determination as an act to relieve stress is to be strongly condemned.”

and sentenced him to four years in prison despite the fact that it was his first offense. In order not to be molested again, the man said, “I will not get on a train. He also promised to take up sports as a hobby after returning to society to relieve stress, but it must be said that the recidivism rate for this type of crime is extremely high.

We interviewed Masashi Usui, professor of social psychology at Niigata Seiryo University Graduate School.

In many cases, suspects arrested for so-called “molestation” often state that “stress was the cause” or “I couldn’t control myself due to alcohol consumption,” which is the easiest excuse for self-defense when interviewed by the police. It is also easy for the police to understand. However, this is not always the case when one delves deeper into the suspect’s motives. The usual thought is that the suspect could not suppress his sexual desire, but in many cases it is a desire for dominance, to control the woman.

Still, most people do not go on to commit crimes. Even if they have such desires in their hearts, many are able to control them with reason. Mr. Usui continues.

What if the cause is a “proclivity”?　Then, what if the cause is a “propensity”? In other words, if you have discovered a sexual habit that you did not even know you had until recently. For example, a person who has learned that he gets aroused when he touches a high school girl’s shoes must break into the school and steal her shoes in order to satisfy his sexual proclivity. Therefore, they repeat the theft. This kind of proclivity cannot be cured by treatment. So, they stay away from the school. It is not wrong for a man who repeatedly molests people on the train to say in court, ‘I will try to stay away from the train. ‘ In other words, it is important to abstain from the behavior that causes it.”

In the vicinity of the area where Tochinai committed the crime, there had been a series of similar victims. The police are currently investigating the connection, including any additional crimes.