Defendant who continued to deny committing the crime…sexually assaulted seven women “behind bars for 41 years”

The June 23 sentence handed down by the Supreme Court’s First Petty Bench was unusually long.

Forty-one years in prison–.

The defendant, 44-year-old Shigehiro Imaizumi, an unemployed man from Minami Ward, Fukuoka City, was sentenced. Between July 2006 and December 2007, Imaizumi sexually assaulted seven women between the ages of 17 and 30. He was charged with indecent assault, robbery, and forcible sexual intercourse, and was indicted on 13 counts. The crimes were said to have been extremely vile.

According to the indictment, Imaizumi “was a predator who used dating websites to scout out women and engage in forced sexual intercourse with them. According to the indictment, Imaizumi took the women he met out to the mountains of Fukuoka Prefecture in his car, threatened them that he had a relationship with a gang and that they could walk home (from the mountains), but that there was a gang office nearby. The victim, a woman in her twenties, suffered severe burns that lasted two months after being hit in the thigh with a hot metal rod.

The crime was not limited to assault. They took out ID cards from the women’s bags, knew their home addresses and workplaces, and robbed six victims of about 2.2 million yen in cash. In one case, he raped the same woman several times.

They are no longer allowed to date or get married.

In the courtroom, the grief-stricken voice of the victim woman was revealed. The woman, who was hit with a heated metal rod on her thigh, said she underwent skin graft surgery but was left with fresh scars. At the first hearing at the Fukuoka District Court, she stated her opinion through her lawyer as follows.

I don’t think I can be in a relationship or married anymore (due to the burns). I hope you don’t let the defendant out of prison for the rest of his life.

However, Imaizumi continued to deny committing the crime.

He claimed, “All of the SM play and photo shoots (that he threatened to engage in) were consensual. He showed no signs of remorse at all. He seemed dissatisfied with the verdicts of the first and second trial.

What was the reason for the unusual sentence of 41 years in prison? Lawyer Hirotaro Kato, who is familiar with the case, explains.

The maximum term of imprisonment under the Penal Code is 30 years. There are two main reasons behind the unusual sentence: First, when the sentence becomes final, the sentences for the previous and subsequent crimes are divided. In October 2007, Imaizumi was convicted of another crime and sentenced to a suspended sentence. Despite this, he repeated the crime after that, and his sentence was a combination of 16 years in prison before the incident and 25 years after the incident.

The other is the seriousness of the crimes committed by the defendant: rape and robbery. The crimes were also malicious, including inflicting serious injuries on the victims. Moreover, the lack of remorse may have tarnished the judge’s impression of the defendant. Considering the defendant’s age, 41 years in prison is effectively a life sentence.

No matter how heavy the sentence is, it will not heal the wounds of the women who were victimized.