The victim of a high-profile rape case involving a former top Osaka prosecutor on May 21 made public a letter she received from him asking her to keep quiet about the assault.
The alleged victim, a female prosecutor from the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office, released a letter she received from Kentaro Kitagawa, 65, a former chief of the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office, at a news conference in Tokyo.
The letter, in Kitagawa’s handwriting, demands the victim refrain from taking action, including, “Don’t sue me for the sake of the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office.”
The woman said she received the six-page letter in October 2019, about a year after the incident.
In the letter, he wrote, “I sincerely apologize for causing you irreparable harm,” and “I also sincerely apologize for not having done anything that can be called atonement at all.”
On the other hand, he wrote, “I understand that you are thinking of complaining to the higher authorities, but I ask you to not do so at the expense of my life.”
He also wrote, “This is a major scandal by a chief public prosecutor and there is great criticism of the prosecutors,” and “I ask you to do this not for my sake, but for the sake of the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office, to which you belong.”
The woman said at a news conference, “I couldn’t report the damage because (the man) held a valued organization and its employees hostage and I was afraid of what he said would happen.”
She also said that secondary damage had occurred as information about the incident spread within the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office.
She called for the establishment of a third-party committee to investigate the matter.
In September 2018, Kitagawa was arrested and indicted on charges of sexually assaulting the female prosecutor, who was his subordinate, at a public employee dormitory in Osaka city. She was reportedly intoxicated at the time and was unable to resist.
At his first trial in October 2024, Kitagawa admitted to the charges and said, “I apologize for causing serious harm to the victim.”
However, after that, his defense team stated that Kitagawa would deny the charges, saying, “he thought there was consent,” and “it is doubtful whether the victim was in a condition where she was incapable of resisting.”
AloJapan.com