“Energetic,” was the word that Nikkan Gendai (Nov. 23) uses to describe the suspect.
“Iha was wearing a dark suit, possibly to make it easier to flee,” a police source confides to the tabloid. “The victim had been holding a strap. He had moved behind her and begun rubbing his groin against her buttocks.”
The source then adds, “According to several eyewitnesses, ‘He’d got a splendid woody for a man of that age.'”
Last summer police had received reports of a similar offender on the same commuter line, and Iha is being grilled over possible prior offenses.
Nikkan Gendai notes that crude crimes by coarse codgers have been increasing of late. In September, a 71-year-old Tokyo man was caught pink-handed attempting to pilfer women’s underwear; a police search of his house came up with a total of 7,000 items. The following month, another 71-year old man was apprehended while in the act of stealing a woman’s under things from a veranda clothesline. And a 64-year-old taxi driver was arrested after he fondled the genitals of his passenger, a cabaret hostess who had drunkenly dozed off on the back seat.
Numerous incidents of stalking involving seniors have also been reported. Last September, a 72-year-old Hiroshima man was detained for hounding a woman of the same age, and earlier this month an 82-year-old Kumamoto man was nabbed for lurking in ambush outside the home of a salesgirl in her 20s to whom he had the hots.
“A lot of these old guys are unable to get over their Lolita complex,” remarks a crime reporter. “Last September a 60-year-old man was arrested in Ibaraki on suspicion of violating the law banning child prostitution. He’d handed 1,000 yen to a junior high school girl and asked her to perform a lascivious act. He was a horny old goat, who was in the habit of accosting young females who walked past his house.
The pattern of violations suggests a shift in crime trends in the world’s most rapidly aging society.
“I guess we can expect more incidents by lecherous old men in the future,” the reporter predicts. (K.S.)
Source: “Zenkoku de erojii-san daibousou,” Nikkan Gendai (Nov. 23, page 7)
