May 30 (Japan Today) - A 23-year-old Chiba University medical student was sentenced to four years in prison Monday for his role in the gang rape of a woman during and after a party in September last year.
The Chiba District Court ruled Masaya Yoshimoto, the last of four defendants from the university to be tried in connection with the incident in Chiba Prefecture near Tokyo, "bears the heaviest criminal responsibility among those involved."
Presiding Judge Hideo Nirei said Yoshimoto sexually assaulted the victim, who had become incapacitated after drinking heavily, and incited another medical student to also commit rape, adding, "The victim seeks severe punishment after sustaining great psychological pain."
Prosecutors had sought 6 years for the fifth-year student at the university's school of medicine, while the defense team had asked for a suspended sentence, saying his acts did not involve the use of force.
A 24-year former medical student and a 31-year-old former doctor-in-training at the university have already been given suspended sentences over the case.
Another former fifth-year medical student, Kensuke Yamada, 23, has appealed after being sentenced to an unsuspended three-year term in April for gang rape.
The trials of the four have revealed their heavy drinking at the party held at a restaurant in Chiba on Sept. 20 evening.
Roughly a dozen people at the party began binge drinking together and the victim was repeatedly asked to compete in drinking contests to empty glasses of wine, according to court hearings.
The four were notorious for their drinking at parties, the court heard, and deliberately wore clothes they didn't mind staining if they threw up.
Yoshimoto and Yamada took the incapacitated woman to a women's bathroom at the restaurant and raped her, while the former doctor-in-training molested her and the 24-year-old former student raped her at his home after the party, according to the trials.
Source: ANNnewsCH
