OSAKA (TR) – A court here on Wednesday sentenced a former employee of broadcaster TV Asahi to 15 years in prison for the rapes of four women in Osaka City over a two-year period.
The incidents began just three years after the defendant completed another prison term for the same crime, reports Jiji Press (Sept. 11).
Between 2015 and 2017, Junichi Okabe, 57, sexually assaulted four women living alone after trespassing into their residences. Okabe was also convicted of intruding into the residences of three other women and stealing items.
“By checking such things as the postal mail of the victims to ensure that they lived alone, the crimes were malicious,” said presiding judge Keishi Matsumoto at the Osaka District Court.
In one case, Okabe intruded into the sixth-floor apartment of a 29-year-old woman before covering her face with a towel and binding her limbs early on July 20, 2017.
“If you don’t make a sound, nothing will happen,” he threatened before sexually assaulting her.
Upon his arrest on suspicion of coerced intercourse resulting in injury in October, 2017, Okabe generally admitted to the allegations, police said at the time.
In 2002, Okabe, then an employee at TV Asahi, was arrested over the rape of three women in Tokyo between January and April of that year. Two years later, he was sentenced by the Tokyo High Court to a 10-year prison term. He was released in 2012.
