U.S. Marine arrested on suspicion of raping 14-year-old girl in Okinawa

Thanks for posting Hiroyuki Nagashima. I found an English version at the Daily Yomiuri.

I find it very strange that the charges were dropped. I can only hope that the Japanese jouralists will follow up on this case and get the facts to the people so that we all understand what has transpired.

No kidding. This was a really big to-do, and I'm wondering if there aren't any social or political pressures being leveraged to get her to drop it (both direct and indirect). It could be as sinister as bribes or threats, or as simple as her not wanting anymore attention from being in an already bad situation.

These incidents are bound to continue, though. Even though the U.S. is probably there to keep heat on N.Korea, I really look forward to when we can leave Japan for good. It would be in the best interests of everybody involved.

For the moment, my wife says that nobody knows why the girl dropped the charges. I doubt the press will follow up on that end of the issue.

She may have felt embarrassed about going to court.
She may have actually liked the guy or felt sorry for him.
She may have been bought off.
She may have simply changed her mind and not felt the whole matter was worth a court.

Let's be patient, but I'm not holding my breath.

Goodness...that's one kind of a case oO
But in the end do we know if he really commited the act?

Because he confessed to attempted rape,
He does not say innocence at all.
The United States Armed Forces announced that they continued investigation about this incident.

Glenski said:

For the moment, my wife says that nobody knows why the girl dropped the charges. I doubt the press will follow up on that end of the issue.
She may have felt embarrassed about going to court.
She may have actually liked the guy or felt sorry for him.
She may have been bought off.
She may have simply changed her mind and not felt the whole matter was worth a court.
Let's be patient, but I'm not holding my breath.

Click to expand...

Hmmm? You conveniently left off...maybe nothing happened? I find it unlikely that the prosecutor would allow a case to be dropped in Japan if there was sufficient evidence. The fact that the man was locked up for 2 weeks and questioned tells me that the case was going no where.

One problem seems to be that they jumped the gun and went after a rape conviction. If there was not enough evidence to support rape, then the prosecutor would never allow it to go to court anyway...save face and have the girl drop the case instead of back tracking and making the police and prosecutors look bad.

Had they also charged him with assault, or say molestation, then the case would still be going forward, but they chose not to do that and only sought the rape charge.

Hiroyuki Nagashima said:

Because he confessed to attempted rape,
He does not say innocence at all.
The United States Armed Forces announced that they continued investigation about this incident.

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He confessed to what would be molestation (kissing and pressing against her), and not necessarily attempted rape. I'm not sure where you draw the line on when attempted rape starts, but I would suspect that he would have to at least attempt to get her pants off.

The Consulate General has assured that he will press the military to complete an investigation. I am positive he will face charges in a Marine court in the near future.

Doctor P,
I conveniently left out nothing. He was charged with rape. He denied it. They held him according to Japanese law and grilled him without a lawyer present (again,according to Japanese law), but he continued to deny the rape. Read the less-than-gossipy news articles and you'll see that he only admitted to kissing and "pressing up to her". Whether that was enough to continue charges, I don't know. I don't know the statutory rape laws in Japan. The papers clearly state that the girl dropped the charges.

Why? Speculation is the only way to answer at this point. I think one of my suggested reasons is going to be the real one. People in Japan are not aggressive enough to pursue certain matters, and embarrassment over such a thing in one's family can be a strong motivating factor. Besides, if it were to leak out that she actually provoked some of the events, a shame-minded parent would be wise to have caution.

Note that I do not purport she did provoke him. The WaiWai article does. Only the girl knows for sure. Look at it logically, though. Someone 38 actually takes you to his home and comes on to you that strongly, you flee, and then he pursues you and you claim rape. No signs of a struggle are suspicious but not conclusive either way. No positive lab results are also probably inconclusive for a legal definition of rape (or at least attempted rape). If you go that far to file rape charges, why back out with a story that goes this far? Pretty fishy to me if all one is trying to do is say they "lost interest", as the news reports have done. Something else is up here.

Should have done this before posting above. According to the Penal Code of Japan, here are 3 articles that might be considered in a rape case:

Article 176. (Forcible Indecency)
A person who, through assault or intimidation, forcibly commits an indecent act
upon a male or female of not less than thirteen years of age shall be punished by
imprisonment with work for not less than 6 months but not more than 10 years. The
same shall apply to a person who commits an indecent act upon a male or female
under thirteen years of age.

Article 177 (Rape)
A person who, through assault or intimidation, forcibly commits sexual intercourse
with a female of not less than thirteen years of age commits the crime of rape and
shall be punished by imprisonment with work for a definite term of not less than 3
years. The same shall apply to a person who commits sexual intercourse with a
female under thirteen years of age.

Article 178. (Quasi Forcible Indecency; Quasi Rape)
(1) A person who commits an indecent act upon a male or female by taking
advantage of loss of consciousness or inability to resist, or by causing a loss of
consciousness or inability to resist, shall be punished in the same manner as
prescribed for in Article 176.
(2) A person who commits sexual intercourse with a female by taking advantage of a
loss of consciousness or inability to resist, or by causing a loss of consciousness or
inability to resist, shall be punished in the same matter as prescribed in the
preceding Article.

I could have gotten a few Japanese men in trouble. There is a point at which we have to draw a line.

sorry that sounded a bit gruff....the coffee maker is still on the blink. I am against adults, having sex with minors. I feel that this case was whipped into a frenzy and everyone was very quick to agree with the girl, and dismiss what the guy was saying. That causes trouble. It happens in the US a lot too. Again, I don't condone the behavior, but I also don't condone witch hunts.

Talking about it...wasn't there a similar case about 10 years ago? I sort of remember hearing about it although I was in middle school back then...

Yes, dreamer.
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9603/okinawa_rape/index.html

I am in total shock here.

So many people focused on "what did the girl do" and "what was the girl wearing" etc etc...

And then people started saying things like "he only kissed her and pressed up against her."

As an educator of young children, I can tell you that if I ever see a man pressing up and kissing against one of my kids he would be very lucky if he could walk into court on his own two feet. I don't care if she was naked and making kissing noises at him.

This was a child with whom he may not even have been able to fully communicate with, yet he took the liberty to, at the very least! lay on top of and kiss!

If it was my own daughter...well...I don't know what the policies are on this site but lets just say that the court date would be for myself, not him.

But that holds true for any adult, man or woman.

For this man-- I and ALL American's are paying to train him, paying him to protect us and to represent us in Japan, and we are paying him to very specifically uphold those promises he made when he joined the forces.

He confessed to violating American laws, military laws, and breaking the oaths that he has sworn TO OUR COUNTRY AND ITS CITIZENS to uphold; we, all of America (myself included via taxation) have hired him to work for us for that very purpose, yet he became one of the very things that he is paid to protect from.

Such actions as those to which he confessed to are despicable in and of themselves, and should be treated for all of that which they are plus something akin to treason for such an egregious break in his oath to his nation.

The issue goes far beyond anything that this minor said or did.

I know I may be butting in but does this have anything to do with the current rumor that the Japanese government is trying to get rid of the American army base in Okinawa? I heard this from my older army-vet coworker.

I know it's a bit of a stretch but it sounds like this would push the japanese gov't in that direction.

I have only recently been researching the withdrawal from Okinawa but it looks like a number have steps have begun to at least reduce the number of troops. Either way...

I do not think that a soldier taking home a young crying Japanese girl, laying on top of her and kissing her has anything to do with that.

You're right but it would give more reason to withdrawal the troops. The fact that an American soldier would go into someone else's country and abuse their laws is complete arrogance. I'm disappointed to see that in our military.

LateNight~* said:

The fact that an American soldier would go into someone else's country and abuse their laws is complete arrogance. I'm disappointed to see that in our military.

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Think how the poor C.O. must be feeling right now. Recent reports of alleged rape and murder by the troops, plus theft by sons of the soldiers. Sheesh. Poor C.O. must not even want to read his morning mail these days.

of course it is also possible that the heart of the problem lay with the commanding officers.

For instance, if they continually let molestation and possible rape (or even arguabaly kidnapping) pass by with a slap on the wrist, then the only motivation the fellow soldiers have is intrensic motivation to respect the Japanese.

How much more, then, will that impact the children's motivation to respect humanity, Japanese, and Japanese laws? Or American laws when they come back to the states?


For those that would take offense:

I have family members in various areas of service, and some of them are absolutely the smartest and most respectable people I have met. But as one of the previous posters mentioned, there are alot of individuals in the forces who are not as honorable as they could be and who joined purely out of extrensic motivating factors (Though that poster was way off base in his accusations).

Well...the marines is clearly guilty of his actions here and that is unacceptable (especially from an educator/parent point of view).
Still we don't know all the details.
What kind of clothes was the young girl wearing? Why did she accept that an unknown foreign person gives her a ride? Did she really not tempted him?
Those are questions that weren't answered and there is actually in my opinion a possibility that the girl is guilty as well...

dreamer said:

there is actually in my opinion a possibility that the girl is guilty as well...

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Not to come across as being mean to you or anything...but

guilty of what?

Guilty of not being wise at 14? Guilty of having not planned for the future very well at 14 years old? Perhaps guilty of having some sexually adventurous desires at 14 ? (how guilty would that be, I mean how terrible for a girl of 14 to have some desires of which she is unfamiliar with and doesn't know how to handle yet. Criminal I say! Guilty!)


I mean...and I really do not mean to be insulting here...but isn't that bassically the same as saying "she is guilty of being a young girl."

Obviously there are alot of unknowns about her life, and they should remain unknown from us.

What we know, and what he knew, is that she was a young girl just being introduced to life, with very little personal history on which to pull from. As with all young people in the world.

A few misguided advances, even if they occurred, would hardly make her "guilty"--they would make her young.

Should we pardon or "understand" his need for molesting every adventurous or sexually curious 2-15 year old that crosses his path. After all, they are guilty right?

Do they not, as developing individuals, have the right to grow mentally, physically, and sexually--biologically--as a human must? and is it not the job of those of us who have already grown and have so many more years of experience under our belt to help guide and protect them as they develop through those stages that we have already passed through?

How much more a man paid to do just that? Trained to do just that? Sworn to do just that?

And remember, that is assuming that she is "guilty" of all of the above, which is by no means certain.


Regardless of anything at all that she did, there is NOTHING that could have possibly occurred to alleviate the offenses done by this marine, as expounded on in my previous posts (short of having intentionally drugged him of course).

I can't even begin to express my sorrow for our men taking actions such as these anywhere in the world, and my disappointment and anger if he is not given a particularly strict judgment by both the courts and us as individuals.

Age and wisedom are two different things and indeed, one cannot expect the same level of maturity between
a 14 years old teenager and a 30 years old adult. However let us look at the situation and the context:
Okinawa is a place where ressentment against the US army is pretty strong, especially since a rape case
happened a dozen years ago. Sure, the girl was too young to know anything about this story and most kids are not interrested in history. However, with the strong protest that followed the case, it is clear that the case was not forgotten, and I find it unbelievable that she did not receive warning from her family regarding american soldiers (I have received biased remarks on Japanese people my whole life based on what they did in China during the war).

Now doesn't the setting of the case seem weird? She was described as being with some friends when a 38 year old foreigner stopped and tried to get her to get on his bike. Doesn't it almost sound like a stereotypical case ?
The victim in this case is 14 years old and not 6 nor 7. Most parents and teacher always teach their kids never to follow any stranger from their youngest age. Would it not seem weird that she followed the guy when he is asking her and not one of her friends to get on his bike?
Even if the girl was not the brightest kid in Japan, wouldn't at least one of her friend get the idea of what might happen and try to tell her not to do it? The way she followed the guy just sounds fishy to me...as if some details were omitted on purpose...

Another point is that we know absolutely nothing about the girl...just enough details to make us want to defend her: she is young (14 years old) and defenseless (a girl against a trained soldier). Almost sounds like what happened was unavoidable. Was she actually trying to discover her sexuality? Well...listening to all those stories about enko it wouldn't surprise me but he still stopped and didn't try to push further on (thanks god).

As far as we know, tyrone probably wasn't frustrated, seeing different women every week, and although his action as a representative of the U.S. and as a man are unforgivable (and I understand your indignation), should he be considered to be the only one guilty? We all know how it is difficult to resist tentation sometimes, and unknown circumstances might have lead to the situation.
I am not saying that the soldier should be forgiven for he has done something that I find terrible. However shouldn't we expect a 14 year-old kid to at least know the risks of going alone with some stranger? Especially girls?

Anyway...I will not try to push the question further since I do not wish to anger you, so please forgive me if what I said displeased you.

I think the only thing the girl is guilty of is being stupid. But the crime in topic here is rape, or sexual assault or whatever, not putting oneself in a bad situation. Thus, regardless of the girl`s foolishness, the man still should bear 100% of the responsibility.

Chidoriashi said:

I think the only thing the girl is guilty of is being stupid. But the crime in topic here is rape, or sexual assault or whatever, not putting oneself in a bad situation. Thus, regardless of the girl`s foolishness, the man still should bear 100% of the responsibility.

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Then why did the girl drop the charges, eh? THINK about it.

The confessions made by the man in question are the points I am addressing. Anything more he did would only make his crimes that much worse, thus the dropping of the case is irrelevant to my point. I would like to know what really caused it to be dropped though.

I understand your point of view dreamer, and I know where you are coming from.

The problem I have with it is that after having studied the processes involved in emotional, and physical child development (from thinking process to brain development to overall body development) I do not believe that claiming she is "guilty" for having not reached certain developmental levels yet is appropriate. People develop at varying rates and have different experiences in life that allow for varying skills to develop before others.

I would say, rather than that she is guilty, that there may need to be an investigation by the parents or individuals close to her in order to determine if she needs a little more assistance, instruction and advice on how to handle all of the developmental changes and experiences she is undergoing at this point in her life.

The problem I see is that people, such as yourself (though I really do not mean any offense by this) honestly do not understand how humans develop and what stages they go through.

Think about how many years of memory you have. You have to be intelligent and able to recall, organize and process information about a situation before you can truly begin to use it to make logical deductions from. But before you can do that you must be able to think logically and at least somewhat abstractly.

How many years of such quality thinking processes does a 14 year old have to pull on? Very few in fact, and in truth they are not particularly logical thinkers at that point and have essentially no abstract thinking skills worth mentioning (except for a few brilliant minds of course). They are still developing in every way possible.



The fact is that she is a child. You could just as well ask, Are you guilty for needing water to drink?

When you learn more about child development you will find that a child simply is not "guilty" for needing extra time and assistance to grow into an intelligent and mature adult. In worst case scenarios they may need to be seperated from portions of society while growing, but the time needed for development is a necessity, not a crime or something of which they are "guilty".

In some situations children at 4 and 7 and 10 and 15 will be forced to act out functions and tasks that we would normally associate with maturity. But even in those cases, and this is from experience as well as research, the children are still just that. Children. If you were to get to know them you would learn that thier thinking process are still very childish, despite some of their mature actions.


Thus I say again, if she were making advances such as those accused, which may not be the case at all being that at this point it is all just conjecture, it would be a simple indicator that she needs a little more assistance handling life, not that she is "guilty" in causing her own molestation.

Do you understand that? You and so many others here are accusing her of actually being guilty in causing her own molestation.....

The guilt, morally and legally, falls squarely on the shoulders of this fellow Tyrone.

Sure, some guilt could also be given to officers that have let similar behavior go unpunished in the past, comrades that would encourage such behavior, and the child's parents and close adults that may have seen signs that indicated she needed some assistance and didn't give it. But it was this guy Tyrone that took advantage of her in that developing state.

Regardless of any other information there is no justification for assigning "guilt" to a child in the case of his/her own molestation.

I've read through the main arguments which place blame on both parties to varying degrees. I think overall both sides have articulately demonstrated that, in various situations, both parties could realistically share some of the blame for what happened.

One the one hand a male cannot be expected to outright ignore the biological and psychological response that occurs when an attractive female (and here I assume, even at 14, she was at least sufficiently 'developed', physically/visually, for lack of a better word, since if she wasn't, that would clearly make him more like a pedophile and change the tone of the incident completely) makes advances. We often forget marrying that young of a woman used to be common practice in all of our countries, and still is in many. That doesn't legitimize it, but it makes it seem less alien from the human experience.

On the other hand a female, despite being of the age where sexual desire starts and where she may, if not with this soldier, have gone out and found someone to do stuff with anyway, still cannot be held accountable for knowing what shes doing because urge does not wait for experience. There's a reason why kids do things that we think could only be carried out by an adult, like hurting animals, hurting each other, lying, etc. They are curious.

However the law, as it has been written by people who have studied these things closely and considered them well, finds that to give a reasonable amount of beneficial doubt to traditionally vulnerable parties they must draw a numerical line somewhere. Obviously in this case, above 14. That is not to say that young people are incapable of potentially abusing this protection, as is commonly seen by young people committing crimes here in Canada and then being protected by the our Young Offenders Act, but the law gives them the benefit of the doubt.

Therefore, if you're this soldier who's thinking about things in the light of man and woman and what comes naturally, you're still obliged to remember the law, because the law is there specifically to guide us in these unsure situations. Therefore, no matter what the causes and influences, this soldier is guilty of a crime in my opinion, if anything took place. The fact that charges got dropped is important to note, but obviously, SOME kind of association took place otherwise we wouldn't be hearing about it today. I don't care how hot she might have been, my better judgement would prevent me from even talking to someone that young outside of a school setting, forgetting what my biological urges are.

This unfortunately lets the girl off the hook for any knowing indiscretions, advances, promises, signals, etc. she visited on this soldier, and doesn't sympathize with any developmental shortcomings the solider may have also had. The law isn't perfect but it is clear.