“We did it for our own entertainment.”
So said Noriyoshi Sano (44), upon his arrest, together with his wife Naoko (42), on violation of Kanagawa Prefecture’s nuisance ordinance.
While incidents of sex-related crimes by teachers are not particularly rare, this may be a first involving a married couple.
Friday (July 17) reports that Sano, who taught art for 19 years at a private school in Kawasaki City, and his spouse were accused of planting a hidden video camera in a girl’s toilet at a school gymnasium in Yokohama’s Hodogaya Ward.
The operation was discovered on June 28, when an adult woman who went into the cubicle noticed an electrical cable running out from the center of a roll of toilet paper.
“She tugged at it, and somebody in the neighboring cubicle tugged back,” a police source relates. “That immediately alerted her that somebody was taking pictures.”
The woman heard the door slam loudly and saw Naoko attempting to flee with camera in hand. The two women jousted and the husband of the victim — who happened to be a member of the Kanagawa Prefectural Police — gave chase and apprehended Naoko.
Sano’s wife said from several years ago she had set up the hidden camera following her husband’s instructions, and had shot females in the toilet on “uncountable” occasions.
The police subsequently raided the suspects’ apartment and found images in his personal computer that appeared to have been recorded using a hidden camera, as well as over 300 video tapes with similar contents — setting off shock waves at his place of employment in Kawasaki.
The school’s principal told Friday that nothing occurred which might have raised suspicions that Sano had used his camera to shoot on his own school’s premises.
Police have yet to determine if the couple used the illicit photos they shot for remunerative activities.
“The couple are parents of a nine-year-old son, and he was at the gym that day while his mother was shooting in the toilet,” the aforementioned cop confides to Friday. “It appears that he was present when his parents were arrested.”
What, the magazine wonders, can be going through the minds of the parents right now. (K.S.)
Source: “Kyoshi ga hamatta ‘fuufu de tousatsu’ akireta teguchi,” Friday (July 17, page 84)