TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police have arrested a 21-year-old man who is believed to have posed as an officer to molest young girls in the western part of the capital, reports the Sankei Shimbun (April 21).
At the end of March, Masaomi Sasaki, a fourth-year student at a private university, is alleged to have exposed the lower half of his body to a 7-year-old girl and fondled her chest on a street in Higashimurayama City.
Sasaki, who has been charged with sexual assault, admits to the allegations. “I love elementary school girls,” the suspect is quoted by police.
Police suspect that Sasaki has been involved in at least 20 similar incidents in Higashimurayama and Higashiyamato cities since February of last year. In approaching the girls, the suspect, who carried a fake police notebook, would announce to the girls he encountered in the street that he was an officer.
The suspect was apprehended after an acquaintance of the 7-year-old girl told her mother about the incident. The mother of the acquaintance, who had witnessed the crime, then notified police.
