TOKYO (TR) – On Thursday, a trial began at the Tokyo District Court in which three Cambodian women who worked at a farm in Tochigi Prefecture are seeking compensation for repeated sexual abuse by the male owner.
According to the lawsuit, the three Cambodian women, aged in their 20s, are seeking compensation totalling 92 million yen, reports TBS News (June 19).
One woman alleges that the owner of the farm repeatedly sexually assaulted her over a roughly five-month period, threatening that she would be sent back to her home country if she refused.
She also claims that after she became pregnant in January 2023 she was forced to have an abortion without having received a sufficient explanation in her native language. The sexual abuse allegedly continued even after the abortion.
The other two women claim that their breasts were groped by the owner.
“I asked him to stop”
The three women came to Japan in June 2022 and worked at the strawberry farm as technical intern trainees. They continued working until April 2023.
The first woman came to Japan with a debt of 16,500 dollars. She told the court on Thursday, “I was frequently called by the owner and began to be sexually assaulted. I asked him to stop, but he threatened to send me back to Cambodia, so I just endured it in silence.”
She also said that when she found out she was pregnant, the hospital forced her to have an abortion. “I’m a Buddhist, so abortion is an unforgivable sin. This also torments me,” she said.
The defendants, on the other hand, are asking that the case be dismissed.
