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Man Gets Life For Abusing 11 Girls

Sendai sex offender also thought to have assaulted 100 other minors

Originally published in The Japan Times, March 28, 2002

SENDAI (Kyodo) — The Sendai District Court sentenced a 26-year-old man to life in prison Wednesday for sexually assaulting 11 girls aged between 3 and 10 in 1999 and 2000.

Masaki Takayama of Sendai was convicted of sexual assault resulting in injury. Prosecutors had demanded a life term, although the crime in question rarely results in this punishment.

The defense had sought a commutation, claiming Takayama, who is unemployed, was feeble-minded and suffered from schizophrenia. He told the court, “I do not remember doing it.”

According to the court, however, Takayama was mentally competent, as he had deliberately committed the attacks in secret and told his victims not to talk about them.

In handing down the ruling, presiding Judge Iwao Maeda said the victims suffered “immeasurable” harm.

According to the indictment, between March 1999 and August 2000, Takayama encountered the 11 victims in various locations—including an apartment in Sendai—on the pretext of searching for a lost cat. He then took them to deserted locations and sexually assaulted them.

Besides the 11 in question, prosecutors said that some 100 other girls had been assaulted by Takayama over a period of three years and that he had videotaped his acts with 45 of them.

The victims now suffer from serious posttraumatic stress and are unable to go outside, according to the prosecutors.