#millions of females have been raped and assaulted and never even took it to court because they know it's useless

[dannypolicy]

Politics as an Arena and a Process

by Dannica Batoon

Politics as an arena depends on the location where political behavior occurs. Often, politics happen in the Congress chambers, the President's office, and administrative courts. However, politics take place anywhere.

Social media is not inherently political because people typically use it for personal or private pursuits. Reddit could merely be a discussion website, live streaming site, or a social news aggregation. You don't even need to introduce yourself on Reddit before you could participate in it. Anonymously, you can start an event by telling where it would take place, the date and time, and what would happen or what to bring. People can do this on most social media platforms before technology conglomerate restricted political activities. Previously, they just cracked down disinformation.

Social media was pivotal in mobilizing people for a political cause in two of my examples: the Umbrella Movement and the 2021 Capitol Riot. The purpose of these events was to overthrow a government. The national election was also a reason for mobilization.

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump tweeted allegations of vote fraud ahead of his rally. He knew that his supporters would walk towards the Capitol building. That was the start of his speech. He added that he would never give up and concede.

Before that, a Reddit community posted threads about the Capitol overthrow if the Congress and former Vice President Mike Pence would validate Biden's victory after an electoral count. When Congress started counting the vote for each state, the mob stormed the Capitol building. The Capitol police evacuated Pence and the lawmakers when the protesters breached the complex. The event injured at least 140 people, and five people died.

Trump supporters organized the deadly riot on Reddit, Twitter, Telegram, Parler (a right-wing website), Gab, TikTok, and TheDonald.win. Trump even urged Qanon, an influential conspiracy theorist, to gather support for the Capitol siege. Qanon blogged about it before January 6 and bragged of bringing thousands of protestors.

In Hongkong, the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism, a student activist group, and the Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement gathered supporters by digital means.

Twitter reported that 1.3 million tweets about Hong Kong were recorded between September 26-30, the beginning of the Umbrella Movement. Tracy Loh, visiting fellow at the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore, told CNBC that social media "was definitely a documenting function, and it also helped in coordinating and mobilizing the protesters, especially when there were several protest sites."

The Arab Spring in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain did not start on social media, but they contributed to counter-revolution. That is why Arabian governments controlled the activities of citizens in social media. Social media platforms suspended and removed thousands of accounts of political dissidents in Tunisia, Palestine, Egypt, and Syria. Lebanon-based organization SMEX, which advocates for digital rights in the Arab region, published an open letter signed by more than 40 civil organizations, calling on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to stop silencing critical voices in the Middle East and North Africa.

Politics also can happen in a schoolyard. Eleven years ago, Mouawiya Syasneh painted graffiti against President Bashar al-Assad. The police kidnapped and tortured the boy, which sparked civil unrest in Deraa. It spread across Syria, which people did not expect even if the Arab Spring was already happening in Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt.

Now, we go to politics as a process.

Across the world, women are on lower incomes than men. According to UN Women, men's average wages are higher than women's in rural and urban areas. Rural women typically work longer hours than men due to additional reproductive, domestic, and care responsibilities. In Benin and Tanzania, women work 17.4 and 14 hours more than men per week, respectively.

Women have narrowed legal and political rights and are subject to various forms of cultural oppression. In this context, feminist interpretations of political problems contributed to political theory and inspired generations of political thinkers and movements. Kate, Brittany Higgins, and Grace Tame's cases exemplify politics as a process of Feminism.

Australia is currently facing cultural protests against women's discrimination in schools, the federal government, and the overall social sphere in the country.

Just this year, Australia recognized Grace Tame as the Australian of the Year. Tame was a victim of sexual assault by her school teacher. She became vocal about it after being quelled by police authorities and laws. Since then, the media has been exposing sexual assault allegations in schools and the Australian government, helping female victims voice their concerns.

Related to Tame's narrative was the historical rape allegation to Christian Porter and the case of a former Liberal staffer, Britanny Higgins.

Attorney-General Christian Porter allegedly raped his colleague, Kate, when he was 18. Kate became a history professor and suffered from mental problems after Porter's crime. People predicted Kate would be a top government official if Porter did not rape her 33 years ago. Porter, meanwhile, succeeded in the Australian government. Kate took away her life after a prolonged investigation caused by the pandemic. Porter, being the Attorney-General, also prevented the inquiry.

Brittany Higgins, a former ministerial staff, experienced delays that lasted for two years. On March 22, 2019, an adviser of Minister Linda Reynolds raped Higgins in her office. The Finance Department covered up the crime, and the Morisson administration terminated the perpetrator for a wrong cause, a security breach in the Parliament House, to hide the rape incident.

Kate's suicide and Higgin's unsolved case reported by the media triggered Scott Morisson's government to act. Now, Australian women are calling for the protection of women in Australian public policies and laws.

Many girls experienced sexual assault in Australia because sexual consent is not taught early in schools. Students in Sydney advanced their calls for women's protection against sexual perpetrators and sex education in social media, particularly on Instagram, spreading across Australia and made as a media agenda.

According to a political communication and psychology theory, agenda-setting influences policies when an issue becomes dominant in the news and public communication or rhetoric.

In the examples that I have given, you can see the interplay between feminism and media effects, and that's how you explain a political process and develop an original conceptual framework in political science.

#Feminism #Everyday feminism #politics #capitalism #journal #bujo journal #IR #iris west #Political Science nerd #ir event: maskerade #studyblr #studyspo

[crazycoke-addict]

Celebrities who are innocent of the crimes they were accused of or possible innocent

Keanu Reeves- a female fan accused Keanu Reeves of impregnating her by dressing up as her ex-husband and also hypnotise her as well. The woman sued him for child support and Keanu Reeves was fighting to claim his innocent. It was revealed that the baby wasn’t Keanu’s. Keanu has also been falsely accused of a hit and run. In 2007, Keanu was sued by a paparazzi named Allison Silva. Silva followed Keanu to a medical facility, where he was visiting a relative. She was taking a photos of him, but Keanu just ignored the photographer and got in his car to leave. Silva claimed the actor crashed into him, causing a painful wrist fracture that rendered him to unable to lift the heavy camera that was necessary for his profession. Keanu disputed Silva’s hit-and-run Story, stating that Silva tripped over his own feet. Silva demand $700,000, but when the case got to court, the paparazzi’s “evidence” worst than his wrist. First, a radiologist’s assessment showed Silva’s wrist fracture was from a childhood soccer injury rather than a recent incident. More damaging, Keanu’s defense produced recent footage of Britney Spears, with the “too heavy” camera in hand. Silva admitted his lawsuit was a cash grab and that he’d exaggerated his pain levels. The case was thrown out in less than two hours.

Brian Banks- In 2002, when Banks was only 17 years old, one of his high school classmates came forward, saying that while they were in School together, Banks dragged her into a stairwell and raped her. Banks served five years in prison and another five on probation before he was able to meet up with the accuser, while he was secretly taped with a microphone- she admitted that she fabricated the rape story,and he got her confession on tape. Only in 2012 was Bank’s conviction overturned.

Tucker Carlson- In the summer of 2001, a woman accused Carlson of raping and claimed that the two met in Kentucky. The problem was Carlson has never went to Kentucky and the women turned out to be a long term stalker of his. It was revealed that the woman was mentally unstable. Carlson didn’t tell anyone about the allegations since he knew it would affect his career and also his family.

David Copperfield- Copperfield went through a two year investigation by the FBI when former Miss Washington runner up, Lacey Carroll accused him of trapping her on his private Island in the Bahamas and recently sexually assaulting her. No evidence was ever found against Copperfield, and the charges were dropped after Carrol accused another man of something similar about a month before she accused Copperfield.

Faze Banks- Youtuber Faze Banks was accused of assaulting Jake Paul’s assistant Meg in 2017 at a club called Warwick. In Jake Paul’s video “my assistant got assaulted”, Meg claimed that she saw Banks at Warwick and was kissing another girl (Banks is dating Alissa Violet), she also said that Banks clothes lined her and knocked the wind right out of her and also gave her a bruise. In the video, Meg rarely talks and the people who were in the video with her (Jake, Erika and Anthony) aren’t key eye witnesses and kept trying to over exaggerate the story. Banks made a response that by saying before that video was uploaded that Nick Crompton got in touch by DM on twitter and said that Meg knew that he didn’t meant to, but later on potrayed him as a monster. Alissa Violet and friends that were there claimed that they didn’t see Banks assaulting anyone at the night and he wasn’t being aggressive at all. It’s odd that the incident took place in a club, which is public place. Meg had a bruise on her neck, but on one of Logan Paul’s video, when the camera zoomed up close to the bruise, the bruise was sparkling. She made a video to prove that the bruise was real by using “make-up remover”, the brand that she used was Burt’s bees exfoliating Towelettes. A girl on twitter made a video using the same brand and created a bruise on herself and tried to wipe it off and nothing came off which probe that Meg was lying. A former team 10 member named Max revealed that he did not see Bank kissing another girl or assaulting anyone as well. Max also said that Meg had a bruise when he came back to their table, but it’s impossible to get a bruise in 20 minutes. It’s possible that Meg has anemia. She also once tweeted that she was randomly getting 5-10 bruises constantly but than delete delete it. Banks revealed that they have the security footage and told him that there weren’t any indication/evidence of him assaulting anyone or even kissing anyone that night.

Ed Westwick- He has four allegations against him, but all four of them don’t make any sense. The timeline doesn’t add up, the stories changed and sometimes they turn the story into a traumatising experience to an romantic dinner. I have written an information about the allegations in which I posted it on Twitter.

Sylvester Stallone- Stallone has been accused of two sex crimes that happened around the 80s and 90s. However, I can’t say much about the first story. The second story has some plot holes. A woman claimed that Sylvester Stallone and his bodyguard raped her in his hotel room and said that he would beat her head in if she ever told. This incident happened in July 1986. However, Stallone’s second wife Bridgette Nielsen came to his defense and said that her and Stallone were newly weds and were inseparable. She said she saw him acting out his scenes, they had dinner and went to back to their hotel room, there was no indication that someone was with them. Stallone also said that no one contacted him about the accusations and found out about it in the media. This is actually common these days. Sylvester Stallone has sued both of the women for reporting false charges on him.

Michael Jackson- In 1993, Michael Jackson, known as the King of Pop, was accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy named Jordan Chandler. His father, a dentist named Evan Chandler, demanded payment from Jackson as damages, but this was refused. Evan was recorded on tape saying, “If I go through with this, I win big-time. There’s no way I lose. I will get everything I want and they will be destroyed forever. Michael’s career will be over.” Jordan’s own mother even declared that there had been no wrongdoing on Jackson’s part – but her husband still pushed ahead with charges.

Jackson’s home was raided by the police and the media storm had begun. Emotionally strained by the charges, Jackson settled with the family out of court for $22 million. A legal document signed by Jackson admitted no wrongdoing and no liability, which was signed by the Chandler’s and their family lawyer with no contest.

Then in 2002, Jackson allowed a documentary camera crew into his home, the program directed by Martin Bashir was broadcast in 2003 as Living with Michael Jackson. One particular scene sparked controversy, where Jackson can be seen holding hands with a young boy. After the documentary aired, the LAPD conducted a thorough investigation. The mother of the young boy who appeared in the documentary, told investigators that Jackson had behaved improperly with her son, and in November 2003 he was charged with seven counts of child molestation and two counts of administering an intoxicating agent.

The People v. Jackson trial began on January 31, 2005, in Santa Maria, California, and lasted five months, until the end of May. The credibility of all the witnesses was questioned when private investigator, Paul Baressi, had taped conversations that revealed Philippe Lamarque, who was a potential witness, would say we saw Jackson touch Macaulay Culkin’s crotch outside of his shorts for a $100,000 payment, but if he was paid $500,000, he would say in court that the hand was on the inside of the shorts. On June 13, 2005, Jackson was acquitted on all counts. 

 He was also accused of child pornography possession after he died, but according to police report this is no documents or indication that Jackson even had child pornography.

George Takei- George Takei was accused of inappropriate touching a male model. Takei says that he can’t remember and even tried to but couldn’t. Recently it was confirmed by the male model that Takei probably didn’t sexually assaulted him.

#keanu reeves #sylvester stallone #shane dawson #george takei #faze banks #michael jackson #brian banks #tucker carlson #david copperfield

[expatimes]

Ntombesintu Mfunzi: A South African athlete’s fight against rape

The hilly and winding trail routes near Mhlakulo village in Eastern Cape, South Africa are challenging for even the most elite runners.

In some parts, reaching the summit requires crawling up the rugged gravel paths on tiptoe.

Ntombesintu Mfunzi, a 39-year-old ultramarathon runner, is one of the top female runners in the country and she lives and trains in this expansive region.

Mfunzi grew up in Ntsimbakazi – a village about 130km (80 miles) from Mhlakulo – where local races are rare.

In 2013, she was invited to compete in the Mirtha Payisa Run for Diabetes. She won the half-marathon and successfully defended her title in 2015 after the 2014 event was cancelled.

But it was in 2016, when she returned with a hat-trick of titles in sight, that her life changed.

The night before the race, Mfunzi was lured into a bush, beaten with a hammer and brutally raped. The rapist threatened to kill her but left her lying in the bushes.

Mfunzi eventually managed to get help, was admitted to hospital and reported the incident to the police.

“To say I was terrified would be putting it mildly,” Mfunzi describes the traumatic experience in vivid detail in her memoir Yoyisa (Overcome).

“My knees went weak and I buckled, falling face down right in front of him. My terrified state did nothing to him, for he brought the hammer down on my back as though he was putting a nail into a cement wall. The pain was excruciating.”

Lying in a hospital bed, she decided she would still compete the next day.

“I said to myself, ‘I’m not going to let the devil win again. I’m going to do what I came here for, which is running’,” she told Al Jazeera.

The following morning, as Mfunzi crossed the finish line ahead of the pack, she collapsed in front of the crowd chanting her name.

Four days later, the community in Mhlakulo found the rapist who is now serving 22 years in prison.

Now, she is using her story to raise awareness of gender-based violence (GBV) and help other rape survivors overcome their trauma while also advocating for systemic change through her work as a human resources officer at a prison in Port Elizabeth.

“From that day in November, my life changed completely,” she said. “I was supposed to die. But maybe God wanted me to save other survivors, to inspire them to fight.”

When Mfunzi reported her rape to the police in 2016, she says they acted swiftly in taking her statement, gathering evidence and transporting her to the hospital for tests

‘Onslaught’

Mfunzi’s story is among many in a country with some of the highest rates of gender-based violence (GBV) and femicide in the world.

According to the most recent data from the South African Police Service (SAPS), 2,695 women were murdered in 2019-20, indicating a woman is murdered every three hours.

In the previous period, the femicide rate was 15.2 per 100,000 women – five times the global average.

South Africa also has the highest rate of rape in the world with 132.4 incidents per 100,000 people.

Reported sexual offences, including rape, have been on the rise annually since 2016, when the number was 49,660. Last year, more than 53,000 sexual assaults were reported to police, but women’s rights groups say the actual number is likely to be much higher.

“These are issues that we are constantly facing,” said Claudia Lopes, a women’s rights activist and programme manager at the human rights foundation, Heinrich Boell, in Cape Town.

“It feels like we’re dealing with the same onslaught, and as civil society organisations and activists, we get frustrated.”

In May 2020, following a wave of renewed protests demanding government action, President Cyril Ramaphosa approved the long-awaited National Strategic Plan on Gender Based Violence and Femicide (NSP GBVF), implemented to address accountability, prevention, protection, response, economic empowerment and research.

Nearly 21 billion rand ($1.36bn) was allocated over three years to support the plan.

However, last month, President Ramaphosa revealed “national resources” were urgently diverted “to fight the COVID-19 pandemic”, as he announced a two-year 128 million rand ($873,000) private-sector fund to provide additional finances to implement the national plan.

Mfunzi said more needs to be done to ensure women feel safe reporting rape, including prioritising rape cases in courts and providing sensitivity training for police officers conducting investigations

The move came amid mounting pressure from activists and civil society organisations, and a sharp increase in violence against women during the nine-week national lockdown imposed last March.

The government says the fund will assist in various initiatives aimed at supporting victims and survivors, strengthening the justice system, raising awareness and creating economic empowerment opportunities for women.

But some activists said the establishment of the fund was rushed and that a lack of consultation with civil society left them in the dark about how the money would be spent.

Lopes said that while the funding itself is good news, the lack of clarity raises questions about transparency and accountability, as well as concerns about the diversion of government funding away from existing services, such as shelters for victims of crime and violence.

“What’s important is knowing how these funds are managed,” said Lopes.

“My fear is that with austerity measures, the private sector fund will be used as an excuse by government to reduce the money to NGOs that render services,” she said.

Other activists have pointed out the minimal information in the government’s 2021 budget about addressing GBV.

Is South Africa doing enough?

In South Africa, accurate and up-to-date statistics on rape are difficult to produce, in part due to high costs and low reporting.

Studies show that those who report incidents to the police experience re-trauma, victim blaming, threats, incompetence and delays in handling their cases.

According to a 2017 report by the South African Medical Research Council – the most recent study of its kind – arrests were made in 57 percent of reported rape cases and only 8.6 percent of cases concluded with a guilty verdict.

When Mfunzi reported her rape to the police in 2016, she says they acted swiftly in taking her statement, gathering evidence and transporting her to the hospital for tests.

While her rapist was arrested within four days, delays in the system meant it took another two years before he was convicted and sentenced.

Mfunzi says she was given a number of reasons why her court dates were repeatedly postponed, including renovations at the court, a shortage of judges and non-availability of lawyers.

“I’m really thankful for their work, but I feel like the justice system relaxed after the rapist was arrested,” she said. “The closure was so important to me … this postponement was really killing me.”

I feel like the justice system relaxed after the rapist was arrested

Mfunzi said more needs to be done to ensure women feel safe reporting rape, including prioritising rape cases in courts and providing sensitivity training for police officers conducting investigations.

“That is why people are not reporting cases … they are scared of it dragging for years.”

Speaking at a public dialogue event aimed at improving access to justice for GBV survivors in August 2020, Police Minister Bheki Cele said GBV remained a priority for the SAPS.

He said progress was being made in resourcing specialised GBV units within the police service and providing officers with sensitivity training.

But following his announcement of the latest crime statistics on February 19, which showed a rise in rape and sexual offences, Cele acknowledged there were policing gaps, particularly in handling GBV cases.

“I do concede that we will have to … put our house in order,” he said.

In its annual reports dating back to 2005, the National Prosecuting Authority, which operates under the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development to prosecute criminal cases, has identified that staff shortages, inadequate budgets and reputational damage have undermined its effectiveness in fighting corruption and GBV.

The government has identified “broadening access to justice for survivors” as a key intervention in its NSP GBVF and has committed in its 2021 state budget to increase the number of rape care facilities from 58 to 61 and designate 99 additional courts as sexual offences courts.

#IChooseToBeAVictorNotAVictim

For Mfunzi, being a victor is also about championing other survivors.

In September last year, she hosted a march to raise awareness of GBV and is a speaker for the 16 Days of Activism campaign.

I’m proud of my colleagues #StAlbansCorrectionalServices, yesterday we had a walked in St Albans surroundings to raise awareness against Gender based Violence #IChooseToBeAVictorNotAVictim #StopKillingUs #IsayRapeIsMurder pic.twitter.com/B1nl1w84i7

— Mfunzi Ntombesintu (@ntombesm) September 24, 2020

She also posts messages of encouragement using the hashtag, #IChooseToBeAVictorNotAVictim.

Mfunzi said many survivors have contacted her to share their stories. Others express their gratitude on social media.

“We’ve never met but it feels like we’ve been friends forever … today I’m doing a dedication run especially for you,” one woman told Mfunzi on Facebook.

“Thank you for this … so encouraged by your strength!” tweeted another.

She said these interactions inspired her to pursue a degree in psychology and work as a counsellor.

Mfunzi still finds strength and healing from running.

A top-10 finisher at the Two Oceans Marathon in Cape Town in 2018, she was training to make the top-five this year before the race was cancelled due to the coronavirus.

Despite this disappointment, she continues to run twice a day in the Eastern Cape.

Mfunzi has not returned to Mhlakulo village since the incident in 2016. But she says she wants to go back one day.

“I would love to go there as the new person that I am. As painful as my journey has been, I’m grateful for the woman I became.”

Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=19036&feed_id=37545

#Africa #African #athletes #Features #fight #Mfunzi #Ntombesintu #rape #SexualAssault #South #SouthAfrica #Sports

[dangercat]

I was forced into Catholicism by two parents who had extremely negative experiences with the Church. It always disturbed me until a friend told me, “Never underestimate a Catholic parent’s willingness to put their own child in danger.” 

I spent the last five months investigating the Catholic Church. It was the most fucked-up job I’ve ever had. 

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles is located in the heart of Koreatown, in a formerly impressive, fourteen-story skyscraper. The Church used to own the building, but have been forced to sell half of it off (and counting) to pay for abuse settlements. One of the floors is a plastic surgery clinic and there is often blood in the elevator, all over the floors and on the walls. The same elevator that at least two people get trapped in per week. There’s no money left for repairs, and the offices are decrepit and disgusting. There is a three stall bathroom for all female employees. Someone had a particularly violent bout of diarrhea on the floor and it stayed there for two days. 

The Archdiocese of LA is the largest Catholic organization on the continent and is using one of the worst databases I’ve ever seen. The person in charge of the database and receiving the criminal reports of every single volunteer and employee is a 75 year-old deacon who recently suffered a massive stroke and doesn’t remotely understand modern technology. His failure in adequately reporting offenders, many of whom have been working for years after the criminal repots are received, is easily blamed on the database. Everything that “slipped through the cracks” was blamed on the database. I could explain to you the asinine system he created of categorizing offenders before they were fully investigated, which involved thousands of folders and spreadsheets, but he forgot what many of the folders meant and never explained a lot of it to me. I can’t quite fully articulate the inanity of the parts of the system that I did understand.

My second day on the job that 75 year-old man, the head of the department, screamed at me for an hour straight over a mistake he made two months before I was hired. He is easily confused, prone to fits of rage and woefully incompetent. He also loves to grab and touch female employees! I had to wear multiple layers a day to pretend I couldn’t feel his meaty, sweaty hands. He subjects his staff to a wet, drooling barrage of racist, sexist, and homophobic hate speech on an hourly basis. He called me a drunken I*dian because he gave me the wrong mail codes to receive criminal reports. As this happened in full view of HR, I was told to attend a training which explained the First Amendment Ministerial Exception, which meant that Title VII and related anti-discrimination laws did not apply to the deacon. Over the course of my five month employ, I learned from eleven other employees that they had filed HR complaints against the deacon to no avail. That a man who once made a cross out of fried chicken and placed it on his computer screen for reasons heretofore unknown to me was entitled to greater freedom under the law was an upsetting and predictable development.

Pastors and principals constantly--CONSTANTLY--made excuses for keeping pedophiles around children under the guise of “furthering pastoral values.” I received so many lectures about misunderstanding the minutiae of California’s sexual abuse statutes, particularly the ones about molesting children. Yes, the statute said that the lector “technically” molested children but I’m not reading it correctly, and he’s the best volunteer they have now, and he’s changed so much. He even attended a retreat. One principal stated a teacher who had multiple pedophilic charges didn’t understand that skinny-dipping with preteens was illegal in this country. And he’s the best teacher they have right now, he really connects with the students and he’s learned his lesson. Can he possibly attend a retreat? 

Obviously forged court documents were forwarded to me as proof of exoneration more than once. Rarer were the character testimonials presumably written by students in the same broken English as the accused, calling the accused their “Jean Klude Vam Dam,” credited to ever-changing names. 

I spoke with a priest who said felony domestic violence against women shouldn’t be a crime because women are responsible for original sin. Another said that men and women are not “legally” equal, so how could a man assault a woman? Wives are property, and girlfriends should not exist. 

I saw coworkers given lengthly spreadsheets of past offenders along with the names of their victims and told to check if their records had been properly deleted. In the face of yet another massive lawsuit and private investigation, the Church could not help but continue to cover up systemic and widespread child rape. I stole the spreadsheets and kept them in my encrypted Protonmail account, but it’s not as if this is a new or fresh scandal. People have come to expect this. It is a concept so entrenched in the common psyche that it remains one of the few “acceptable” rape jokes a person (or the Onion) can make.

The Archdiocese is under a continuous, ongoing investigation by the California and federal Department of Justice. Both organizations let them get away with everything. They passed their last two audits with flying colors.

I met with a man who wouldn’t stop crying because Governor Newsom had extended the parameters of who could sue for sexual abuse that had occurred years ago. “We’re going to lose the rest of the building, and Newsom doesn’t even care! He wants to destroy us!” I couldn’t meet his gaze, so I stared at his besocked Birkenstocks until I could walk away.

I was ostracized by my coworkers for not attending an anti-choice and anti-death with dignity march and worse, for them believing I was the deacon’s “spy,” and special pet. In my interview, I stated I was a “double Catholic,” due to being half Irish Catholic and half Cuban Catholic. I was too cowardly to say that I’ve been an atheist since six years old. After being grabbed, shaken and having my hair pulled by a deranged priest, I was so flustered during my lunch break that I threw my wallet in the garbage and didn’t realize until four hours later.

Like many other confused lapsed Catholics, I used to harbor a hot priest fetish. This was pre-Fleabag--though that priest wasn’t even hot in the least. One of the saddest aspects of the job was that I never met a single passable priest. Not a looker in the bunch.

I had multiple friends, who have previously questioned my questionable employment history, tell me to quit. Worse were the ones who told me they would never have taken the job in the first place, content to leech off of their partners and parents or to languish away further into extended unemployment. I don’t have anyone to fall back on, I don’t have family connections, and for some reason (an ethnic and difficult name, perhaps?) I can’t get a job at a normal organization to save my life. 

I had an ongoing mental debate as to whether or not the Archdiocese was the most evil organization I had ever worked for. After all, I had worked for one of the most corrupt police departments in the world and went through an extended employment process with the CIA. There’s no question in my mind that the Church is not only the most evil organization that I’ve ever been professionally affiliated with, it is the most evil organization of all time. This shit has been going on for millenia. Millions dead, continents colonized in the name of Christ, ongoing holy wars, millions raped and abused, generation after generation of families torn apart. It took them two thousand years to finally admit to children that dogs are allowed into heaven, for Christ’s sake. And on a smaller scale, they’re currently responsible for both Mike Pence and William Barr. They make the CIA look cute. You cannot compete with the Catholic Church in the evil Olympics. It’s as impossible as the virgin birth.

#job hell #the catholic church #catholiscism

[ladystylestores]

South Korea’s most-notorious serial killing cold case now exposes huge injustices

The crime would have been shocking anywhere else, but in Hwaseong, then a rural area near South Korea’s capital Seoul, murders like this were happening with disturbing regularity. She was the eighth female to be murdered there in two years.

Nearly a year after the teen was killed, police arrived at the house of a 22-year-old repairman, just as he was about to eat dinner.

“What’s this about?” Yoon, whose full name is not being published due to a South Korean law that protects the privacy of suspects and criminals, remembers asking. “It won’t take long,” he says police replied.

The officers took him to a small interrogation room with a single table at the local police station where they questioned him for three days about the 13-year-old’s rape and murder. Eventually, they extracted a confession.

Yoon told police that on the night of the murder, he had gone for a walk to get some air, according to records of his confession obtained from his attorney. During the walk, he had to stop several times to rest — his childhood polio had left him with a limp so bad that he had been exempted from compulsory military service. Around midnight, Yoon saw a house with a light on and felt a sudden “urge for rape,” he told police, according to transcripts of his confession. He climbed into the house and attacked the young girl, although he told police he knew the parents were asleep next door.

Afterward, he burned his clothes and went home, according to the confessions.

Little is known about the girl and her family, who have never spoken to media.

Yoon’s story is somewhat clearer: He was convicted of raping and murdering the 13-year-old girl and sentenced to life in prison, though his sentence was later reduced on appeal. He was released after 20 years in prison.

The problem is, Yoon says he didn’t do it.

Where everyone knows everyone

Before 1986, Hwaseong wasn’t the sort of place where violent crime happened. About 226,000 people lived in the area, scattered among a number of villages between forested hills and rice paddies.

One of those villages was Taean-eup, where Yoon lived. In the 1980s, Taean-eup was a bustling community with rice-wine bars and Korean-style coffee shops where locals liked to gather and gossip. Many people worked in the nearby factories, many of which created electrical goods, such as light bulbs, remembers Hong Seong-jae, who ran the farming machine repair store where Yoon worked. Others worked as rice farmers, and even those who lived downtown kept cows for milk. Everyone in Taean-eup knew each other, Hong said. Before the murders, there was no real crime to speak of — only the odd robbery or break-in.

“But we were all so poor, there wasn’t much to be lost,” Hong said.

But in 1986 that changed. In September that year, a woman was murdered, the first in a series of killings that came to be known as the Hwaseong murders. By 1991, 10 women and girls had been killed Hwaseong region, including the 13-year-old killed in her bed. In all of the cases, the victims had been sexually assaulted, and in many of the cases, an article of their clothing, such as stockings or a blouse, had been used in the killing. The victims included housewives, schoolgirls, and a department store worker, according to Ha Seung-gyun, who was involved in the investigation.

The youngest were teenagers, the oldest were 71 years old, according to police records.

No one seemed safe.

As the murders kept happening, the people of Hwaseong grew more afraid.

Residents formed squads and patrolled the streets at night, armed with sticks. Women avoided going out after dark.

“There were no street lights and it was very dark,” said 55-year-old Park, who worked at a factory in Jinan-ri, another village in Hwaseong, in the 1980s. CNN agreed not to use her full name due to the sensitivity of the case. “I would take the bus and when I encountered a man, I’d be frightened. I was told not to wear red clothes and not to go out after dark.” There were rumors the killer attacked women wearing in that color, Ha said. “There was a big rumor about the red clothes (attracting the killer). The third killing involved a woman, Lee, who worked at a department store in Suwon.”

Hong, the Taean-eup resident, remembers that men were afraid of being questioned by police. The village became quiet and eerie, he said. “We were worried for being mistaken as criminals, so we didn’t go out drinking either. Even if we hadn’t done anything, things could get out of our hands.”

The investigation

When the first victim was murdered, the responsibility fell to local police to investigate. But after three females were found dead within three months, they brought in investigators from a nearby city to help. “From the third killing, the police saw that it was a serious case. It had wide media coverage and local residents were frightened,” said detective Ha, who was one of the leaders of the investigation, in a lengthy interview last year on the South Korean YouTube channel he created to highlight cases he worked on.

By then, police were sure that they were looking for a serial killer, but Ha said they had few clues.

Video taken during the original investigation of the Hwaseong serial killings. Date unknown. (Credit: KBS)

Police authorities investigate the Hwaseong serial killings in Gyeonggi Province. (Credit: JTBC)

Image taken during the original investigation into the Hwaseong serial killings. (Credit: JTBC)

It was a time before surveillance cameras or phone tracking, and before DNA evidence was widely available. Police had to rely on other, more creative measures to catch the killer.

The first five murders happened within a 6 km (3.7 mile) radius in Hwaseong so police spread out in teams of two, dotted every 100 meters (328 feet), Ha said. It didn’t work: the next killing happened where there was no police presence.

Some female police officers wore red and tried to lure the killer into a trap, others went to a clairvoyant who told them to find a man with a missing finger, and some became so frustrated that they performed a shamanistic ritual on a voodoo scarecrow, Ha said.

But the killings kept happening. Police logged more than 2 million days on the case — a record for an investigation in South Korea, according to news agency Yonhap. “The more we looked (at the victim’s bodies), (the more) we couldn’t hide our feeling of powerlessness, our anger at the killer,” said Ha, who is now retired and in his 70s, in his YouTube video.

“After months spent on the rice paddies and fields tracking the killer, I can say that our hatred of him was beyond imagination.”

Yoon was the only person ever convicted of any of the 10 murders. Police suspected he carried out a copycat killing — all the other victims had been murdered outside, said Ha, who wasn’t involved in Yoon’s investigation.

The other nine murders went unsolved.

A breakthrough

For many years, it seemed that one of South Korea’s most infamous serial killers would never be found. The mystery was revisited in “Memories of Murder,” a 2003 film by “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho. Then a few years later, as the statute of limitations expired for the last victim, it became clear that, even if the killer was found, there would be no trial or justice for the victims’ families.

But the murders didn’t leave Hwaseong’s collective memory, even as the villages eventually incorporated into a small city. And the police didn’t give up their search.

In September 2019, Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police superintendent general Ban Gi-soo, the latest police officer in charge of the investigation, made an explosive announcement. In July, police sent evidence that had been held in their files for 30 years to the National Forensic Service for DNA testing.

The DNA evidence from at least three of the murders matched one man: Lee Chun-jae. Lee is currently in prison serving a life sentence for the 1994 rape and murder of his sister-in-law, according to Daejeon court officials and South Korea’s Justice Ministry. It was huge news in South Korea.

A month later, there was another development. Lee confessed to all 10 of the Hwaseong murders, and four others that police did not provide details on.

He had given a detailed confession, even drawing on a piece of paper to explain the locations of the killings, an official from Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said.

“It is an important case that had prompted questions all over Korea,” the official said. “The victims and their families had strongly demanded (the truth).”

It was a major breakthrough in one of the country’s most infamous serial killing cases. But it also left authorities in a tricky position.

If Lee murdered all 10 people — including the 13-year-old — then Yoon had spent 20 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.

Lee’s confession alone wasn’t enough to clear Yoon’s name. In the eyes of the law, he was still a convicted murderer.

Three days of no sleep

These days, Yoon is a gregarious man in his 50s. He works at a leather proces sing factory in North Chungcheong Province, a few hours’ train ride from Seoul, and he still walks with a limp. On the surface, he is cheerful and sociable, a man who speaks loudly and laughs freely.

But his life has been one of hardship.

As a child, Yoon’s family moved around, Yoon says. When Yoon was in his third year at school, his mother passed away in a car accident. After that, his father disappeared, and Yoon quit school to start work. Yoon came to Hwaseong, where he begged outside a fried chicken restaurant for a year, he said. When he was about 11, he began working at a farming tool center, and by 22 was training at the same center to become a qualified technician.

He was a heavy smoker, and had never been in a relationship with a woman, he told police in his confession. “I haven’t even tried talking to girls because I thought no one would like a disabled person like me,” he said.

His former boss, Hong, remembers him as always being a bit sad. “I think it was because he grew up without his parents,” Hong said. “He wasn’t very articulate and didn’t express his feelings much. He was excellent at repairing machines though.”

After the police took him away, Yoon remembers being kept handcuffed in the interrogation room for three days. He barely ate, and was only allowed to leave to go to the toilet. Whenever he tried to sleep, police would wake him up.

“Those times were much like a nightmare,” he said. “When you don’t get sleep for three days, you don’t know what you said. You don’t remember what you did. You can’t think properly.

“You just go along with their questions, on and on.”

Nowadays, Yoon thinks that he was mistreated, but at the time, Yoon didn’t know anything about law — he hadn’t even finished elementary school.

Yoon served 20 years in prison for the murder and rape of a girl in 1988. Yoon is now seeking to overturn his conviction at retrial. (Credit: Charles Miller)

Yoon walks in his neighborhood in North Chungcheong Province. (Credit: Yoonjung Seo)

Park Joon-young is a South Korean lawyer known for taking retrial cases. He is on Yoon’s defense team. (Credit: Yoonjung Seo)

Yoon ultimately signed three confessions and at trial he admitted to the murder, hoping to avoid the death penalty. He served 20 years.

“He must have felt everything was so unfair, spending years in prison,” said Hong, who went out of business when Yoon went to jail as he couldn’t continue his company without Yoon’s skill set. “I lost my business, but he lost his life.”

Last December, Gyeonggi Namu Provincial Police launched a formal probe into the conduct of seven police officers and one prosecutor who worked on the original investigation into the killings, including reviewing allegations of abuse of power during arrests. The results of the investigation haven’t been released yet.

Yoon’s experience wasn’t totally unusual for the time. In the 1980s, it was common for suspected criminals in South Korea to be kept awake for long periods to extract a confession, according to Lee Soo-jung, a forensic psychology professor at Kyonggi University.

“It was a time when confessions, without evidence, were enough to get someone convicted.”Lee Soo-jung

And it wasn’t just Yoon who accused police of torture. Kim Chil-joon, an attorney who defended other suspects in the Hwaseong murder case, said many people were abused during the investigation.

One of his clients, also surnamed Kim, was accused of the fourth and fifth killings after a medium in the United States said they had seen him in their dream, he said. Kim was subject to torture and interrogation and in 1995 successfully sued the government for damages.

But Kim took his own life two years later after bouts of depression and PTSD, Kim Chil-joon said.

Last year, chief inspector Ban said police were investigating whether officers abused suspects during the original investigation, revisiting allegations that one man was waterboarded with spicy seafood soup.

But these officers will likely never be charged — the statute of limitations has run out on those allegations, too.

“I want my honor back”

Yoon is determined to clear his name, and his retrial began this week. That in itself is a rare event in South Korea.

A tiny fraction of applications for retrials are accepted and they generally require new evidence, according to lawyer Heo Yoon, who specializes in providing retrial legal advice.

Park Joon-young, one of Yoon’s attorneys, says that evidence is rarely kept for longer than 20 years except in the most high-profile cases — like Hwaseong.

How a serial killing case stretched on for decades

1986

A woman is found dead in Hwaseong. This is the first of the Hwaseong serial killings.

1989

Yoon is questioned by police and charged with one of the Hwaseong murders.

1990

Yoon is sentenced to life in prison for the murder.

1991

A 10th woman is killed in Hwaseong, marking the final of the serial killings.

2003

A movie directed by Bong Joon-ho based on the murders is released. The movie is called “Memories of Murder”.

2006

The statute of limitations runs out on the most recent Hwaseong killing.

2009

Yoon is released from prison.

2019

Police test DNA taken from Hwaseong murder scenes. They identify a culprit, who confesses to the murders.

2020

Yoon goes on retrial for the murder that he spent 20 years in prison for.

Source: Korean National Police

In Yoon’s case, Lee Chun-jae’s confession will be crucial. It’s possible that the convicted murderer will testify in court before the three judges, who have the power to overturn Yoon’s conviction, Park said.

There’s a good chance he’ll be acquitted. At a pre-retrial hearing in February, the presiding judge verbally apologized for Yoon’s false conviction.

Yet, there are still issues with Yoon’s case. Although Lee’s DNA matches a number of the murders, police have not announced any DNA evidence connecting him with the 13-year-old girl.

Also, pubic hairs found at the scene returned a 40% match with Yoon’s, according to a 1989 report written by an expert at National Forensic Service (NFS).

Those hairs have not been DNA tested — and even if they do ultimately match Yoon’s, his lawyer Park warns it’s possible that a sample taken from Yoon could have been mixed up with evidence taken from the scene of the murder. The court has ordered the NFS to extract DNA from the hair, Park said.

The retrial is expected to take place over a number of months, but if Yoon is found not guilty, he can make a claim for compensation, according to Park.

Yoon says nothing can compensate him for the 20 years of life he lost. Even when he was freed from prison 10 years ago, the world had changed so much that initially he wanted to go back in. “It took me around three years to adjust,” he said. “I couldn’t live. My life patterns at the prison didn’t accommodate the new world I was faced with.”

“I want to clear my false accusation, and I want my honor back. I want to be satisfied with these, and that’s all.”Yoon

Yoon knows Lee will never be tried for the crime, nor will the police officers who he says tortured him, because too many years have passed since the sleepless nights he spent in that small police interrogation room.

He just wants to live the rest of his life as an innocent man.

“I want to clear my false accusation, and I want my honor back,” he says. “I want to be satisfied with these, and that’s all.”

Julia Hollingsworth wrote from Wellington, New Zealand. Yoonjung Seo reported from Seoul. Jake Kwon reported from Hwaseong, South Korea, and Seoul.

Hilary Whiteman and Jenni Marsh edited.

Illustrations by Max Pepper. Illustrations are based on reporting, however they may not be an exact representation of events at the time. Graphics and layout by Jason Kwok and Natalie Leung.

Sophie Jeong and Paula Hancocks also contributed reporting from Seoul.

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Disney’s Bob Iger: ‘We’re All Sobered’ by Worldwide Coronavirus Crisis

Disney executive chairman Bob Iger opened Disney‘s yearly meeting in Raleigh, N.C., on Wednesday with an acknowledgement of the difficulties provided by the coronavirus crisis while likewise trying to assure investors that the company is strong enough to hold up against a recession in organisation.

” We’re all sobered by the concern that we feel for everybody impacted by this international crisis,” Iger said. He emphasized that Walt Disney Co. has made it through other crises over its almost 100- year history.

” What we have actually shown repeatedly is that we are incredibly durable,” Iger told the crowd at Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts. “Our future has actually constantly been intense and stays so for excellent factor. What we produce at the Walt Disney Business has never been more essential or more crucial.”

Iger also presented his successor as CEO, Bob Chapek, who is the 6th individual to function as president of Disney. Chapek, a 27- year Disney veteran who most recently headed its parks division, informed shareholders he has “been a Disney fan my entire life.” Disney amazed business world by handing the CEO reins to Chapek on Feb. 25, when Iger shifted to executive chairman, concentrating on the business’s imaginative operations.

Iger had some motion picture news for the audience, disclosing that Disney has actually cut an offer to manage theatrical circulation of Peter Jackson’s documentary on the making of the Beatles’ “Let It Be” album at a time of great chaos for the legendary band.

Meanwhile, Chapek announced that the long-planned “Avengers School” attraction at Disney’s California Experience is set to open July 18.

As normal, the conference was a breezy affair with little friction from investors. Shareholders as soon as again rejected a proposal to require Disney to use far more disclosure of its lobbying activity in Washington, and with state and city governments.

Iger informed the audience that the launch of Disney Plus has actually “greatly surpassed our greatest expectations” with subscribers of almost 30 million racked up in just a couple of months.

” The decision to pivot to a direct-to-consumer method was a vital one and it is a leading concern,” Iger said, including that he is “more positive than ever” in the “remarkable capacity” of Disney Plus, in addition to ESPN Plus and Hulu.

Iger talked up the pledge of three upcoming Marvel-produced original series for Disney Plus and he flaunted a clip from “The Falcon and the Winter Season Soldier,” a production that was shuttered in Prague on Tuesday amid coronavirus issues.

” The Falcon and the Winter Season Soldier” and “WandaVision” are set to bow later this year on Disney Plus.

On the function movie front, Iger showed off clips of 4 upcoming films: “Mulan,” “Black Widow,” “Jungle Cruise” and “West Side Story.” Of Steven Spielberg’s take on the precious musical, Iger guaranteed that the movie “definitely measures up to its hype.”

Iger and Chapek took a handful of questions from the audience.

Chapek also politely handled issues raised by a woman that Disney is now “promoting LGBT ideology in products for kids.” Disney’s goal is always to “reflect the diversity in our fan base and with our audience,” he responded.

Another shareholder informed Iger and Chapek that he was “concerned” about the level of creativity at Pixar and Lucasfilm, and about the level of maintenance at Disney’s amusement park. Iger wasn’t having it.

” We never inform our groups to develop something low-cost. We inquire to make it fantastic,” Iger stated. “There’s not a company on the planet that creates as much success as we do.”

Another seasonal question– when will Disney re-release the 1946 animated movie “Tune of the South”– got the same response that it did throughout Iger’s 15- year period as CEO. Even with a disclaimer to alert audiences about “out-of-date” depictions of African Americans, “Tune of the South” is too inflammatory for showcasing in the present day.

” It’s just hard, provided the representations in some of those films, to bring them out today in some form or another without angering individuals, so we’ve decided not to do that,” Iger said.

Iger closed the 75- minute conference by asking shareholders to provide Chapek a round of applause. “These are really tough times,” Iger told the crowd. “Stay healthy please.”

Miriam Haley, among the victims in the Harvey Weinstein case, informed the court on Wednesday that the sexual attack had actually crushed her self-confidence and triggered long lasting psychological and psychological scars. Haley, a former production assistant on “Task Runway,” affirmed at the trial that Weinstein by force performed oral sex on her at his Soho house […]

Lila Gerson has signed up with the Concerts department at APA, acting as senior vice president, tactical marketing & brand name collaborations, it was collectively announced today Steve Martin, Bruce Solar and Steve Lassiter, co-heads of worldwide music at APA. Gerson, based out of APA’s New york city office, will oversee all artist partnership, trip sponsorship, recommendation, and digital & social […]

Northern Ireland’s most significant cinema chain has actually introduced a necessary “seat separation” policy, together with other measures planned to counter the growing spread of the coronavirus. A declaration released Tuesday night by Omniplex said that “after a comprehensive risk assessment and analysis of the global cinema market,” the business would leave every second movie theater seat […]

Harvey Weinstein’s 23- year prison sentence has been met hope in the U.K., where market figures wish to see justice portioned for transatlantic victims of the disgraced film mogul. Wednesday’s result has actually been hailed a significant victory that will set a groundbreaking precedent for future cases. Most significantly, the sentence proves that the “law […]

I never ever thought I ‘d state this aloud, let alone compose it, but I in fact found a degree of respect for Tucker Carlson Monday night when on his primetime program he broke ranks with associates at Fox News and took Donald Trump to task for lying to the public about the gravity of the coronavirus […]

Harvey Weinstein’s defense lawyer blasted Justice James Burke’s decision to sentence her customer to 23 years in jail on Wednesday early morning. […]

Harvey Weinstein provided a long statement at his sentencing hearing on Wednesday, saying he was sorry however likewise “puzzled” by the claims of rape and sexual assault leveled against him. “I believe guys are puzzled about all of this,” Weinstein said. “This feeling of countless males and females who are losing due procedure … I’m […]

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Susanna and the Elders, Restored (Left)

Susanna and the Elders, Restored with X-ray (Right)

Kathleen Gilje, 1998

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TOKYO–A civil court here handed down a landmark ruling last week in the case of freelance journalist Shiori Ito, 30, who alleged she was raped in 2015 by a Noriyuki Yamaguchi, 53, a good friend and biographer of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The court ruled Yamaguchi must pay over ¥3.3 million yen ($30,000)  in damages. Since Ito went public with the charges in 2017 after police efforts to pursue the case were quashed, she has become a vital symbol for the still fledgling MeToo movement in Japan; her story is a microcosm of the problems women face here in a nation where there are far too many men who share the attitudes of a Harvey Weinstein.Japan’s Big MeToo Moment: You Think Hollywood Abuses Women? You Oughta See Tokyo.Yet this victory in a civil case also reopens the very ugly question of why Yamaguchi never was prosecuted for his alleged crime. The police had a warrant prepared on sexual assault charges and were planning to arrest Yamaguchi at Narita airport on June 8, 2015, but were stopped at the last minute by a high-ranking police bureaucrat known as “Prime Minister Abe’s attack dog” who then scuttled the original investigation.The Daily Beast has reported on this case from the very start, following the chain of evidence and documenting the suspicious twists. The civil lawsuits for damages incurred during sexual assault were filed by Ito in September of 2017. She accused Yamaguchi, a former Washington bureau chief for the Tokyo Broadcasting Service, of sexually assaulting her on April 4, 2015, inflicting mental and physical damage. Ito asserted that she met Yamaguchi at a restaurant after he offered to help further her career as a journalist. She claimed that after a few drinks she lost consciousness. When she awoke she was in his hotel room and he was raping her. She said she believed she may have been drugged. Yamaguchi later countersued, claiming that Ito had defamed him, and sought 130 million yen ($1.1 million) in damages. Is Japan’s Top Politician Behind a Shameful Rape Cover-Up?The plight of Shiori Ito became world-wide news and the subject of a BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, because in Japan it is even more rare than in other countries for victims to come forward with allegations of sexual assault.Interest has been heightened since the alleged assailant is a close personal friend of the prime minister and has written two books about him. Add to that the role a close ally of the prime minister played in scuttling the investigation and it’s not surprising that cries of foul play have been heard inside and outside Japan. On December 18 the Tokyo District Court, Judge Akihiro Suzuki presiding, found Ito’s account of the attack was consistent and believable. The court noted that Ito had reported the rape to the police, sought the support of medical professionals, and that the testimony of witnesses and surveillance footage from the hotel all indicated that Ito was unconscious and unable to consent to sexual intercourse. Even before reaching the hotel, the court noted, the semi-unconscious Ito asked the taxi driver to take her to the nearest train station, but Yamaguchi insisted the driver take the pair to the hotel.In addition to these findings, the court dismissed Yamaguchi’s defamation claims, effectively throwing out his counter lawsuit. The judge indicated that the information disclosed by Ito was in the public interest, meant to show the obstacles that rape victims face in society, and therefore was not slanderous. * * *What The Doorman Saw* * *Yamaguchi says he will appeal the ruling, but he might want to reconsider in light of what appears to be damning new evidence. On  December 19, after the trial was over, the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho, which first brought the case to light in a series of exposés going back to 2017, published an explosive scoop. Shukan Shincho obtained a copy of a written statement from a key witness that had been submitted to the court too late to be included in the civil case. The witness is identified as a doorman at the Sheraton Miyako Hotel, where Yamaguchi took the intoxicated Ito. The doorman had spoken to the police before an arrest warrant had been issued when the investigation was first under way and gave formal testimony as evidence thereafter. However, in the aftermath of the retracted arrest warrant, and a failed appeal to the Prosecutorial Review Board, his testimony never saw the light of day. He was not informed by the courts about the progress of the case and only discovered Ito took it to civil court when the hearings were nearly over. In a desperate effort to speak up about what he saw that night, the doorman came forward with his statement just as the hearings had ended. Ito’s lawyers asked for the court proceeding to be reopened, but the court rejected the appeal and his statement was not submitted as evidence. In the published interview with Shukan Shincho, the doorman talked about the first time he spoke to the police on the matter. He said his memory was jogged when an investigator told him “the taxi driver suggested that you may have heard more of their conversation”—that is, the exchanges between Ito and Yamaguchi as she tried to avoid accompanying him. That night, the doorman had opened the backseat door of the taxi in the hotel driveway. “I made eye contact with Yamaguchi,” he said, “and I got an impression that he was a scary man, and he was pulling the arm of the woman who sat in the other seat, urging her to get out.”  “The woman insisted that she had to clean up the mess, she had made a mess, she sounded like a young child and I realized that she had thrown up on the floor of the car,” the doorman recalled. “When the man tried to drag her out of the car from the door on her side, she made gestures of protest, refusing to get out, and insisting on cleaning up. I thought she must have really wanted to clean or maybe she was using that as an excuse to get away from him. The man grabbed her arm and said ‘don’t bother.’” “She could barely stand or walk on her own, barely conscious and completely intoxicated repeating ‘I have to clean up,’” the doorman said, “but still she was pulled towards the hotel and I remember her letting out a loud wail as though she were crying.” He also noted the arrogance of Yamaguchi, who failed to apologize and did not offer to pay a cleaning charge, which is the custom in Japan when one has defiled a taxi.What followed was caught on the hotel’s security camera. Yamaguchi dragged a limp and incapacitated Ito into the hotel lobby. The doorman recalls the police saying, “with testimony as clear cut as this, this case is ours [to win].” However, despite this testimony and other evidence, the case was dropped. * * *No Means No Investigation* * *Ito, at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, speaking in English, said, “When I went to [the] police for the first time after the incident, the first word that I got was these things happen and we can’t investigate, which was quite shocking to hear. There’s so many reasons behind it why they use this excuse. After I heard that comment, I sort of pressured them: ‘Well I know which hotel I came out [of] so please check the CCTV,’ and they did. They found the CCTV and they said this is something, it is criminal, but yet they didn’t want to file the case, and I asked why again. The  investigator [said] that it is because he is pressured by prosecutors because our conviction rate in Japan is very high, and I believe it’s something to do with it.”Prosecutors only want to bring cases they can be absolutely sure they will win—typically their conviction rates are 99 percent—and sex crimes are hard ones to make. “That was quite surprising,” said Ito. She also noted the lack of female police officers. In 2017, fewer than 10 percent of the police force were women. “Police officers need to be educated how to deal with these victims who are traumatized with sex crimes. But my case for instance, I asked for a female police officer [and] I talked to her and after two hours she said, ‘I’m sorry I’m from the traffic department and I can’t take your report so please talk to my male co-worker who is a male investigator.’”As Ito noted, in Japan, not only are the prosecutors and police reluctant to deal with sexual crimes against women, even if they get their day in court, Japan's predominantly male judiciary is likely to find they didn't resist enough. And thus the rapists often go free. * * *Conspicuous Silence* * *After the court’s ruling in favor of Ito last week, several of the previously loud and abusive defenders of Yamaguchi suddenly went quiet. The most conspicuous silence came from Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker and protege of the prime minister, Mio Sugita, who previously gained attention for anti LGBQT remarks. In the BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, Sugita claimed Ito “was at fault as a woman, drinking with a man until she lost consciousness,” defending Yamaguchi and men as the “victim in these cases.” And her tweet from last June has come back to haunt her. Sugita wrote that Ito did not deserve to be dealt with as a genuine victim. “I don’t forgive sex crimes. It is unacceptable to force a victim to take drugs, or drag her into a car, and do things like rape her and I think the punishment should be more severe. But in an outrageous/unreasonable case like Ito Shiori—I feel anger as a woman that she is treated the same way as other rape victims who are absolutely not at fault.” The court essentially found that Yamaguchi did the things that Sugita says she can’t forgive and her underlying theme that rape victims were often somehow at fault, was not well-received either. At this point in time, she still has made no comment on the court’s findings. While some critics of Ito suddenly shut up, the netizens and trolls of Japan quickly rose to the occasion and launched a stream of invective against Ito so offensive that media outlets were at a loss what to do. The Mainichi newspaper disabled the comments on the video of Ito’s statement outside the courthouse immediately after the verdict, but one can easily watch the same video on other news channels and the comments keep rolling in: “I want to rape her, too,” was a typical comment. Others included, “This is clearly a modern comfort woman’s scheme,” referring to the Asian and European women who were coerced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during Japan’s imperial era. For the right wing, “comfort women” is a term used to denigrate any independent woman as a willing prostitute, intent on cheating men of their money* * *Did Yamaguchi Get Special Treatment?* * *In his press conference on Thursday at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, Yamaguchi accused the court of ignoring his claims and alleged there are contradictions in Ito’s statements. He called her a habitual liar  and hinted that he was now going to sue several media outlets, including The New York Times and the BBC. The only thing that seemed to give him pause was when he noticed that Shiori Ito was in the room listening to him speak, and taking notes.When The Daily Beast asked him, as a veteran journalist himself who had covered crime in Japan, did he know of any case in which the police had rescinded an arrest warrant for a felony, he did not answer the question. He probably doesn’t want to answer; numerous sources, lawyers, former prosecutors and police say that it is almost unprecedented for an arrest warrant not to be executed. For better or worse, this is how the Japanese criminal justice process typically works in felony cases. The police investigate, find evidence, then consult with the prosecutors. If the prosecutor agrees, then they go to the court and get a warrant. They make an arrest. The suspect is held for up to 23 days in jail, interrogated every day, and then a final decision is made on whether to prosecute. They can then be rearrested on different charges. The former CEO Of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, was put through this meat grinder and spent over 120 days in jail. His trial has not yet started. That wasn’t the case for Yamaguchi.Yamaguchi did insist that despite his close personal friendship with the prime minister, he had never asked for political interference on his behalf. He says he didn’t even know he was under investigation when the Takanawa police reluctantly let him depart without putting him in handcuffs as they had planned on June 8, 2015. For the most part, at the press conference Yamaguchi let his lawyer say the unpleasant things he didn’t want coming out of his own mouth. The lawyer’s supposed “bombshell” claim that Ito must be lying because she wrote in her book that her relative was a prosecutor when he was not was effectively dismissed two hours later. Ito clarified that her relative was an assistant prosecutor–fukukenji–which in Japan, is rarely differentiated from a regular prosecutor (kenji).* * *A Plea For Help* * *The circumstances that led to the criminal investigation of Yamaguchi being shelved may never be fully known. The civil court did not touch upon the previous events and it is nearly impossible to sue the Japanese government for failure to do its fiduciary duty. The Abe administration has a long history of shredding documents and cover-ups, so getting to the truth will be hard. Perhaps the last word should go to Ito, who made this plea to the media in her closing remarks, when asked about whether there was political interference in her case. Her voice cracked as she spoke.“What I want to ask for you guys is that I need your help to find out these things. I can’t do this all by myself, and I’ve been thinking when is the right time to do more investigation around it because I can’t [alone]. I need your help.” While the Abe administration seems to be rather unhelpful in her case, or to women in general, maybe there are some in or outside of the administration who are willing to help. Mari Hirayama,  a Professor in Criminal Procedure and Criminology at Hakuoh University, considers the verdict a step forward for sexual assault victims in Japan. “She could not get justice [from the]  Prosecutorial Review Board, but now she is admired worldwide. I hope this [case] inspired the reform for the Penal Code planned next year.” Indeed, the common sense ruling of the Tokyo District Court is a leap forward for equal rights in Japan, establishing one thing that should already be crystal clear––if a woman is forced to have sex without her consent, that is a crime.The crusty old men who rule Japan were able to stop one arrest, but Ito has started something unprecedented in this country. The attempt to muzzle the rape investigation has backfired and instead ignited a movement, lead by Ito, who is no longer a victim but a hero for many. In its schemes to silence Ito, the government unwittingly gave voice to an army of women who are fed up with suffering silently and will not be stopped until true justice is served. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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How Many Republicans Are Against Trump

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How Many Republicans Are Against Trump

How Mitch Mcconnell And Senate Republicans Learned To Stop Worrying About A Biden Victory And Love The Infrastructure Bill

What happened Tuesday in the Senate might seem like nothing short of a political miracle: Nineteen Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined with Democrats to pass a $1?trillion infrastructure bill, advancing President Biden’s top domestic priority.

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But those Republicans said there was nothing mystical about it. The vote was the result of a carefully calibrated alignment of interests, one shepherded and ultimately supported by a group of senators isolated from the immediate pressures of the GOP voter base, which remains loyal to former president Donald Trump, who repeatedly urged the bill’s defeat.

Among those interests is a strategic one, McConnell and other Republicans said. By joining with Democrats in an area of mutual accord, they are seeking to demonstrate that the Senate can function in a polarized political environment. That, they believe, can deflate a Democratic push to undo the filibuster — the 60-vote supermajority rule than can allow a minority to block most legislation — while setting up a stark contrast as Democrats move alone on a $3.5?trillion economic package.

“I’ve never felt that we ought to be perceived as being opposed to everything,” McConnell said in an interview Tuesday, before commenting on the slender nature of the Democratic congressional majorities, then rattling off bipartisan bills that passed during his time as party leader under two previous presidents.

New 2020 Voter Data: How Biden Won How Trump Kept The Race Close And What It Tells Us About The Future

As we saw in 2016 and again in 2020, traditional survey research is finding it harder than it once was to assess presidential elections accurately. Pre-election polls systemically misjudge who is likely to vote, and exit polls conducted as voters leave the voting booths get it wrong as well.

Now, using a massive sample of “validated” voters whose participation has been independently verified, the Pew Research Center has . It helps us understand how Joe Biden was able to accomplish what Hillary Clinton did not—and why President Trump came closer to getting reelected than the pre-election surveys had predicted.

How Joe Biden won

Five main factors account for Biden’s success.

The Biden campaign reunited the Democratic Party. Compared to 2016, he raised the share of moderate and conservative Democrats who voted for the Democratic nominee by 6 points, from 85 to 91%, while increasing the Democratic share of liberal Democrats from 94 to 98%. And he received the support of 85% of Democrats who had defected to 3rd party and independent candidates in 2016.

How Trump kept it close

Despite non-stop controversy about his policies and personal conduct, President Trump managed to raise his share of the popular vote from 46% in 2016 to 47% in 2020. His core coalition held together, and he made a few new friends.

Longer-term prospects

BillGalston

The Fbi Confirmed That It Received 4500 Tips On Kavanaugh Only To Hand Them To The Trump White House

Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh

It may be hard to remember after the roller coaster of a news cycle we’ve all been riding for the past few years, but during the 2018 confirmation hearings for Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointee Brett Kavanaugh, Republicans actually bothered trying to create the appearance that they took allegations of sexual assault seriously. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were clearly concerned about looking like they were being dismissive or rude to the woman who stepped forward to accuse Kavanaugh of attempted rape in high school, Christine Blasey Ford. They were so worried, in fact, that the male-only Republican side of the panel hid behind a female interlocutor, Rachel Mitchell, who was hired to question Blasey Ford for them. 

The whole thing was just an act, of course. That was obvious at the time, because the Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee, while allowing Blasey Ford to testify, refused to call other potential corroborating witnesses, including a woman who claimed to have had a similar encounter with Kavanaugh in college. But a new report this week underscores the phoniness of Republican claims to take allegations of sexual assault seriously.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

Fate Of 10 Gop Impeachers Since Capitol Riot Shows ‘going Against Trump Is The Death Knell’

Steve Friess PoliticsDonald TrumpLiz CheneyCapitol Riots

The 10 Republican members of Congress who voted to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in instigating the mob that marauded through the Capitol on January 6 knew the riot would be a historic turning point for the country. What they didn’t realize: The events of that day might also mark the beginning of the end of their own political careers, and that their actions would give Trump and politicians loyal to him a rallying cry to help them retain control of the Republican Party.

Six months after the riot, the impeachers are the GOP’s most endangered incumbents. Nine of the 10 already face credible primary challengers ahead of next year’s midterm elections, and all have been the targets of relentless attacks from Trump and his supporters, as well as on social media from once-supportive constituents livid about their impeachment vote. Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, stripped of her leadership role in the House for her persistent criticism of the former president, has absorbed the most venom. But Trump seems bent on exacting revenge on the entire group, calling out the names of each of the GOP representatives who voted to impeach him one by one in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, then telling the audience: “Get rid of them all.”

The 20 Biggest MAGA Influencers Since Donald Trump’s Capitol Riot Bans

Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s ‘Mr. Corman’ Explores the Nuances of Adulthood

Opinionmy Fellow Republicans Please Do The Right Thing And Back An Impeachment Inquiry

On Tuesday, Romney finally had some company. He was joined by the same four colleagues — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Susan Collins of Maine and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania — who also joined him in November in acknowledging Joe Biden’s victory and standing steadfast in opposition to outlandish claims that the election was rigged or stolen.

Murkowski denounced Trump for having “perpetrated false rhetoric that the election was stolen and rigged, even after dozens of courts ruled against these claims.” Sasse said Trump didn’t have any evidence to back up his claims of election fraud, “and neither do the institutional arsonist members of Congress who will object to the Electoral College vote.”

Opinionthis Trump Impeachment Defense Falls Apart As Soon As You Read The Constitution

Yet 45 Republican senators voted against taking up the impeachment trial Tuesday. Some want to spend as little time thinking and talking about Trump as possible, but many are still in thrall to his base. Twenty Republican-held Senate seats will be contested in two years, and the current occupants no doubt fear primary challengers from the MAGA right if they show any sign of breaking with Trump. What’s less clear is why, given their rhetoric and behavior over the last four years, they think the country would be any worse off with Trump sycophants in their seats.

Thanks to the impeachment process they’ve been gifted by the Democrats, Senate Republicans have one last chance to break with Trump and the conspiracist authoritarianism he represents. Their opening move Tuesday was a weak one, but they still have time for a course correction when the vote on conviction takes place next month. If they won’t do it for the country, they should at least do it to save their place in the party.

Related:

Gop Leader Mccarthy: Trump ‘bears Responsibility’ For Violence Won’t Vote To Impeach

Some ambitious Republican senators have never been as on board the Trump train as the more feverish GOP members in the House, and the former might be open to convicting Trump. But their ambition cuts two ways — on the one hand, voting to ban Trump opens a lane to carry the Republican mantle in 2024 and be the party’s new standard-bearer, but, on the other, it has the potential to alienate many of the 74 million who voted for Trump, and whose votes they need.

It’s a long shot that Trump would ultimately be convicted, because 17 Republicans would need to join Democrats to get the two-thirds majority needed for a conviction. But it’s growing clearer that a majority of the Senate will vote to convict him, reflecting the number of Americans who are in favor of impeachment, disapproved of the job Trump has done and voted for his opponent in the 2020 presidential election.

Correction Jan. 14, 2021

A previous version of this story incorrectly said Rep. Peter Meijer is a West Point graduate. Meijer attended West Point, but he is a graduate of Columbia University.

House Votes To Impeach Trump But Senate Trial Unlikely Before Biden’s Inauguration

9. Rep. John Katko, New York’s 24th: Katko is a moderate from an evenly divided moderate district. A former federal prosecutor, he said of Trump: “It cannot be ignored that President Trump encouraged this insurrection.” He also noted that as the riot was happening, Trump “refused to call it off, putting countless lives in danger.”

10. Rep. David Valadao, California’s 21st: The Southern California congressman represents a majority-Latino district Biden won 54% to 44%. Valadao won election to this seat in 2012 before losing it in 2018 and winning it back in the fall. He’s the rare case of a member of Congress who touts his willingness to work with the other party. Of his vote for impeachment, he said: “President Trump was, without question, a driving force in the catastrophic events that took place on January 6.” He added, “His inciting rhetoric was un-American, abhorrent, and absolutely an impeachable offense.”

How Americas Political System Creates Space For Republicans To Undermine Democracy

9) Republicans havean unpopular policy agenda

Let Them Eat Tweets

The Republican policy agenda is extremely unpopular. The chart here, taken from Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson’s recent book , compares the relative popularity of the two major legislative efforts of Trump’s first term — tax cuts and Obamacare repeal — to similar high-priority bills in years past. The contrast is striking: The GOP’s modern economic agenda is widely disliked even compared to unpopular bills of the past, a finding consistent with a lot of recent polling data.

Hacker and Pierson argue that this drives Republicans’ emphasis on culture war and anti-Democratic identity politics. This strategy, which they term “plutocratic populism,” allows the party’s super-wealthy backers to get their tax cuts while the base gets the partisan street fight they crave.

The GOP can do this because America’s political system is profoundly unrepresentative. The coalition it can assemble — overwhelmingly white Christian, heavily rural, and increasingly less educated — is a shrinking minority that has lost the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential contests. But its voters are ideally positioned to give Republicans advantages in the Electoral College and the Senate, allowing the party to remain viable despite representing significantly fewer voters than the Democrats do.

10) Some of the most consequential Republican attacks on democracy happen at the state level

11) The national GOP has broken government

Have Expressed Reluctance Or Misgivings But Havent Openly Dropped Their Backing

Paul Ryan and John Boehner, the former speakers of the House: Both have expressed their dislike of the president, but have not said whom they will support in November.

John Kelly, a former chief of staff to the president: Mr. Kelly has not said whom he plans to vote for, but did say he wished “we had some additional choices.”

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska: She has said that she’s grappling with whether to support Mr. Trump in November. She told reporters on Capitol Hill in June: “I am struggling with it. I have struggled with it for a long time.”

She said: “I think right now, as we are all struggling to find ways to express the words that need to be expressed appropriately, questions about who I’m going to vote for or not going to vote for, I think, are distracting at the moment. I know people might think that’s a dodge, but I think there are important conversations that we need to have as an American people among ourselves about where we are right now.”

Mark Sanford, a former congressman and governor of South Carolina: Mr. Sanford briefly challenged the president in this cycle’s Republican primary, and said last year that he would support Mr. Trump if the president won the nomination .

That has since changed.

“He’s treading on very thin ice,” Mr. Sanford said in June, worrying that the president is threatening the stability of the country.

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.

Trump Calls For ‘no Violence’ As Congress Moves To Impeach Him For Role In Riot

This time, there will be more. Some Republican senators have called on Trump to resign, and even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he is undecided at this point.

Trump’s impeachment won’t lead to his removal — even if he is convicted — because of the timeline. The Senate is adjourned until Tuesday. The next day, Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president. But there’s another penalty the Constitution allows for as a result of a Senate conviction that could be appealing to some Republican senators — banning Trump from holding “office” again.

While there is some debate as to the definition of “office” in the Constitution and whether that would apply to running for president or even Congress, that kind of public rebuke would send a strong message — that Republicans are ready to move on from Trumpism.

Rep Tim Ryan: Probe Underway On Whether Members Gave Capitol Tours To Rioters

7. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, Washington’s 3rd: Herrera Beutler was swept in with the Tea Party wave in 2010, but her district is a moderate one. Trump won it 51% to 47%. Herrera Beutler gained prominence several years ago for giving birth to a child three months early, born without kidneys and a rare syndrome. Her daughter, Abigail, became the first to survive the often-fatal condition. The now-mother of three and congresswoman from southwest Washington state declared on the House floor her vote in favor of impeachment: “I’m not choosing sides, I’m choosing truth.”

8. Rep. Peter Meijer, Michigan’s 3rd: Meijer is a freshman, who won his seat with 53% of the vote. He represents a district that was previously held by Justin Amash, the former Republican-turned-independent who voted in favor of Trump’s impeachment in 2019. Meijer, a Columbia University grad who served in Afghanistan, is a social conservative in favor of restrictions on abortion rights and against restrictions on gun rights and religious freedoms. But he said Trump showed no “courage” and “betrayed millions with claims of a ‘stolen election.’ ” He added, “The one man who could have restored order, prevented the deaths of five Americans including a Capitol police officer, and avoided the desecration of our Capitol, shrank from leadership when our country needed it most.”

List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2020 Presidential Campaign

This article is part of a series about

e

This is a list of Republicans and conservatives who opposed the re-election of incumbent Donald Trump, the 2020 Republican Party nominee for President of the United States. Among them are former Republicans who left the party in 2016 or later due to their opposition to Trump, those who held office as a Republican, Republicans who endorsed a different candidate, and Republican presidential primary election candidates that announced opposition to Trump as the presumptive nominee. Over 70 former senior Republican national security officials and 61 additional senior officials have also signed onto a statement declaring, “We are profoundly concerned about our nation’s security and standing in the world under the leadership of Donald Trump. The President has demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term.”

A group of former senior U.S. government officials and conservatives—including from the Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43, and Trump administrations have formed The Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform to, “focus on a return to principles-based governing in the post-Trump era.”

A third group of Republicans, Republican Voters Against Trump was launched in May 2020 has collected over 500 testimonials opposing Donald Trump.

List Of Republicans Who Opposed The Donald Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign

This article is part of a series about

e

This is a list of Republicans and conservatives who announced their opposition to the election of Donald Trump, the 2016 Republican Party nominee and eventual winner of the election, as the President of the United States. It also includes former Republicans who left the party due to their opposition to Trump and as well as Republicans who endorsed a different candidate. It includes Republican presidential primary election candidates that announced opposition to Trump as the nominee. Some of the Republicans on this list threw their support to Trump after he won the presidential election, while many of them continue to oppose Trump. Offices listed are those held at the time of the 2016 election.

Sen Rand Paul Objects To ‘sham’ Impeachment Trial Of Former President Trump

Those five votes — and the senators’ clear, forceful statements against Trump’s lies since the election — suggest that there is still a healthy, responsible part of the party . But there’s no guarantee it will survive. As the saying goes, the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one.

And Republicans have a very serious problem.

As they know better than anyone else, the kinds of politicians who populate the Senate don’t have a place in the party they’ve helped create. No matter how much they court Trump’s base or dog-whistle to the conspiracy theorists, foreign policy hawks like Marco Rubio of Florida, anti-poverty innovators like Tim Scott of South Carolina, old-school appropriators like Roy Blunt of Missouri, chameleons like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and erstwhile constitutional libertarians like Mike Lee of Utah don’t have a place in a party whose future belongs to Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, two freshman Republicans who have expressed sympathy for the QAnon cult.

Opinionwe Want To Hear What You Think Please Submit A Letter To The Editor

Boebert live-tweeted about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s location during the Capitol insurrection Jan. 6 as Pelosi, second in line to the presidency, was being rushed to a secure location. Greene, among other offenses, made in 2018 and 2019 suggesting that she supported executing prominent Democrats.

Some of the senators who endorsed Paul’s motion Tuesday might be tempted to think they can simply move on from Trump and therefore want to avoid an impeachment trial so his entire shameful presidency can be forgotten as quickly as possible.

But they’ve helped to create a disaster much bigger than Trump. By giving in to him at every turn, Republicans helped create the epidemic of conspiracy theories and alternative facts rampant in the Republican Party.

Perhaps most consequentially, they endorsed his Big Lie about the election. It wasn’t just Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri who propagated fantasies about widespread voter fraud, irregularities and a “steal.” Fourteen Senate Republicans announced before the attack on the Capitol that they planned to object to counting at least one state’s electoral votes, even though Trump had won none of his more than 60 lawsuits trying to overturn the results and even though no evidence of widespread voter fraud was found by election officials in any state regardless of party.

Here Are All Of The House Republicans Who Voted To Impeach Donald Trump

Ten members of the GOP joined with Democrats in the vote.

President Donald Trump impeached for ‘incitement of insurrection’

The House of Representatives has voted to impeach President Donald Trump — making him the only president in American history to be impeached twice.

Unlike his first impeachment in 2019, 10 Republicans joined Democrats to charge Trump for the “incitement of insurrection” for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol with a final vote of 232-197.

Some Republicans may have feared for their own safety if they voted for impeachment, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of those who voted against Trump, said. Kinzinger told ABC’s “Powerhouse Politics” podcast that some members of his party are likely holding back from voting for impeachment due to fear of highlighting their own participation in supporting the president’s false claims of election fraud.

Democrat Jason Crow, of Colorado, relayed similar thoughts in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday morning.

“I had a lot of conversations with my Republican colleagues last night, and a couple of them broke down in tears talking to me and saying that they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment,” he said.

Here is a list of the 10 Republicans who took a stance against Trump:

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.“It’s not going to be some ‘Kumbaya moment’ on the floor — it’s going to be an awakening by the American people to hold their leaders accountable to their rhetoric,”

Most Voters Say The Events At The Us Capitol Are A Threat To Democracy

Supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol earlier this afternoon to protest lawmakers certifying Joe Biden’s election victory. According to initial reports, one person was shot and killed and at least one explosive device was found in the area.  

A YouGov Direct poll of 1,397 registered voters who had heard about the event finds that most voters perceive these actions as a threat to democracy. Democrats overwhelmingly see it this way, while most Independents also agree. Among Republicans, however, only a quarter think this should be considered a threat to democracy, with two-thirds saying otherwise.  

In fact, many Republicans actively support the actions of those at the Capitol, although as many expressed their opposition . 

Among all voters, almost two-thirds say that they “strongly” oppose the actions taken by President Trump’s supporters, with another 8% say they “somewhat” oppose what has happened.  

Overall, one in five voters say they support the goings-on at the Capitol. Those who believe that voter fraud took place and affected the election outcome are especially likely to feel that today’s events were justified, at 56%. 

Who is responsible for what is happening at the Capitol? 

Republican Senator Mitt Romney laid the blame for the breach squarely at President Trump’s feet, saying “This is what the president has caused today, this insurrection”. 

Are those in the Capitol building extremists, terrorists or patriots?  

 See and table results.  

Image: Getty 

Shades Of 2016: Republicans Stay Silent On Trump Hoping He Fades Away

Just like when Donald J. Trump was a candidate in 2016, rival Republicans are trying to avoid becoming the target of his attacks ordirectly confronting him, while hoping someone else will.

It was a familiar scene on Sunday when Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, tried to avoid giving a direct answer about the caustic behavior of former President Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Trump had called Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, “dumb” and used a coarse phrase to underscore it while speaking to hundreds of Republican National Committee donors on Saturday night. When Mr. Thune was asked by Chris Wallace, the host of “Fox News Sunday,” to comment, he chuckled and tried to sidestep the question.

“I think a lot of that rhetoric is — you know, it’s part of the style and tone that comes with the former president,” Mr. Thune said, before moving on to say Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell shared the goal of reclaiming congressional majorities in 2022.

Mr. Thune was not the only Republican straining to stay on the right side of the former president. The day before Mr. Trump delivered his broadsides against Mr. McConnell, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, presented Mr. Trump with a newly created award for his leadership.

This week, she told The Associated Press that she would not run if Mr. Trump did, a display of deference that underscored the complications the former president represents to Republicans.

Ignore The Hype Of Republicans Threatening To Break Away Over Trump

Cas Mudde

Anti-Trump Republicans get lots of media attention. That doesn’t mean they are relevant within the Republican party

Last modified on Sun 16 May 2021 18.29 BST

“Over 100 Republicans, including former officials, threaten to split” from the Republican party, the New York Times declared on Tuesday. The next day the Washington Post upped the ante, headlining that the 100 Republicans were vowing “civil war”; the columnist Jennifer Rubin proclaimed the beginning of “the stampede away from the GOP”.

Sounds exciting, but what has really happened?

On Thursday, a group of some 150 former Republicans published “A Call for American Renewal”, a manifesto with the stated aim of “building a common sense coalition for America”. The call itself reads mostly like the US constitution but with a distinct anti-Trump undertone. While the former president is never named, the manifesto warns against “forces of conspiracy, division, and despotism”, opposes “the employment of fear-mongering, conspiracism, and falsehoods”, and rejects “populism and illiberalism”. It emphasizes the importance of the constitutional order, rule of law, and pluralism, while implicitly supporting immigration and explicitly celebrating “our diverse nation”. So far, so good; but is this anodyne statement worth all the hype?

Active office-holders, with power and relevance, are conspicuously absent from the signatories

Read more

Opinion:why Donald Trump May Lose Influence In The Republican Party

Common wisdom holds that former president Donald Trump remains the dominant force within the Republican Party. The truth is that his personal influence and standing are not as powerful as many imagine, and his power is as likely to decline as it is to increase.

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There’s no denying that many Republicans still revere Trump. He remains highly popular with GOP voters, and candidates for office still vie for his endorsement. Two recent Politico/Morning Consult polls show how strong he remains. A mid-May poll found that half of Republicans surveyed would vote for Trump in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary matchup, and another poll released this week shows that 59 percent want Trump to play a major role in the party going forward. Trump is clearly the single most influential figure in the party today.

Other signs point to the gradual erosion of Trump’s influence. Candidates may seek his support, but those who fail to get it don’t drop out of the race. Trump’s endorsement of Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks for his state’s open Senate seat did not dissuade Katie Britt, a former chief of staff to retiring Sen. Richard C. Shelby, from entering the race on Tuesday. Her three-minute announcement video barely mentions Trump and strikes traditional conservative themes of faith, family and hard work.

House Impeaches Trump A 2nd Time Citing Insurrection At Us Capitol

This vote could expose some of them to potential primary challenges from the right as well as possible safety threats, but for all of them Trump had simply gone too far. Multiple House Republicans said threats toward them and their families were factors weighing on their decisions on whether to impeach this president.

Ten out of 211 Republicans in the House is hardly an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, and clearly, most Republicans’ sympathies still lie with Trump — and his ardent base of followers. But the 10 represent something significant — the most members of a president’s party to vote for his impeachment in U.S. history.

How Trumps Presidency Turned Off Some Republicans A Visual Guide

As our maps and charts show, Trump not only lost to Joe Biden – he lost to other Republicans on the ballot

Last modified on Tue 15 Dec 2020 14.28 GMT

After four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, many voters who typically vote Republican turned against him.

For example, in Winnebago county, Wisconsin, about 72% of voters cast their ballot for the Republican House candidate – either Glenn Grothman or Mike Gallagher, depending on where they live. But just 52% cast their vote for Trump.

This happened in county after county: Trump performed worse than other Republicans on the ballot. Here’s how Trump performed in each county compared with the Republican House candidate on the same ballot:

House v Trump 2020 map

This is why Trump lost the election, but why Republicans gained seats in the House.

To be clear, Trump also underperformed other Republicans in 2016. But since the last election, the gap between Trump and other Republicans grew in all kinds of communities in the US. In other words, the election wasn’t just about Democrats rejecting Trump by turning out in record numbers. It was also about Republicans and independents who preferred the Republican party – but just without Donald Trump.

An Examination Of The 2016 Electorate Based On Validated Voters

One of the biggest challenges facing those who seek to understand U.S. elections is establishing an accurate portrait of the American electorate and the choices made by different kinds of voters. Obtaining accurate data on how people voted is difficult for a number of reasons.

Surveys conducted before an election can overstate – or understate – the likelihood of some voters to vote. Depending on when a survey is conducted, voters might change their preferences before Election Day. Surveys conducted after an election can be affected by errors stemming from respondents’ recall, either for whom they voted for or whether they voted at all. Even the special surveys conducted by major news organizations on Election Day – the “exit polls” – face challenges from refusals to participate and from the fact that a sizable minority of voters actually vote prior to Election Day and must be interviewed using conventional surveys beforehand.

This report introduces a new approach for looking at the electorate in the 2016 general election: matching members of Pew Research Center’s nationally representative American Trends Panel to voter files to create a dataset of verified voters.

See also: A Demographic Profile of 2018 Midterm Voters

About half of validated voters were married; among them, Trump had a 55% to 39% majority. Among unmarried voters, Clinton led by a similar margin .

[worldviraltrending]

TOKYO–A civil court here handed down a landmark ruling last week in the case of freelance journalist Shiori Ito, 30, who alleged she was raped in 2015 by a Noriyuki Yamaguchi, 53, a good friend and biographer of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The court ruled Yamaguchi must pay over ¥3.3 million yen ($30,000)  in damages. Since Ito went public with the charges in 2017 after police efforts to pursue the case were quashed, she has become a vital symbol for the still fledgling MeToo movement in Japan; her story is a microcosm of the problems women face here in a nation where there are far too many men who share the attitudes of a Harvey Weinstein.Japan’s Big MeToo Moment: You Think Hollywood Abuses Women? You Oughta See Tokyo.Yet this victory in a civil case also reopens the very ugly question of why Yamaguchi never was prosecuted for his alleged crime. The police had a warrant prepared on sexual assault charges and were planning to arrest Yamaguchi at Narita airport on June 8, 2015, but were stopped at the last minute by a high-ranking police bureaucrat known as “Prime Minister Abe’s attack dog” who then scuttled the original investigation.The Daily Beast has reported on this case from the very start, following the chain of evidence and documenting the suspicious twists. The civil lawsuits for damages incurred during sexual assault were filed by Ito in September of 2017. She accused Yamaguchi, a former Washington bureau chief for the Tokyo Broadcasting Service, of sexually assaulting her on April 4, 2015, inflicting mental and physical damage. Ito asserted that she met Yamaguchi at a restaurant after he offered to help further her career as a journalist. She claimed that after a few drinks she lost consciousness. When she awoke she was in his hotel room and he was raping her. She said she believed she may have been drugged. Yamaguchi later countersued, claiming that Ito had defamed him, and sought 130 million yen ($1.1 million) in damages. Is Japan’s Top Politician Behind a Shameful Rape Cover-Up?The plight of Shiori Ito became world-wide news and the subject of a BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, because in Japan it is even more rare than in other countries for victims to come forward with allegations of sexual assault.Interest has been heightened since the alleged assailant is a close personal friend of the prime minister and has written two books about him. Add to that the role a close ally of the prime minister played in scuttling the investigation and it’s not surprising that cries of foul play have been heard inside and outside Japan. On December 18 the Tokyo District Court, Judge Akihiro Suzuki presiding, found Ito’s account of the attack was consistent and believable. The court noted that Ito had reported the rape to the police, sought the support of medical professionals, and that the testimony of witnesses and surveillance footage from the hotel all indicated that Ito was unconscious and unable to consent to sexual intercourse. Even before reaching the hotel, the court noted, the semi-unconscious Ito asked the taxi driver to take her to the nearest train station, but Yamaguchi insisted the driver take the pair to the hotel.In addition to these findings, the court dismissed Yamaguchi’s defamation claims, effectively throwing out his counter lawsuit. The judge indicated that the information disclosed by Ito was in the public interest, meant to show the obstacles that rape victims face in society, and therefore was not slanderous. * * *What The Doorman Saw* * *Yamaguchi says he will appeal the ruling, but he might want to reconsider in light of what appears to be damning new evidence. On  December 19, after the trial was over, the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho, which first brought the case to light in a series of exposés going back to 2017, published an explosive scoop. Shukan Shincho obtained a copy of a written statement from a key witness that had been submitted to the court too late to be included in the civil case. The witness is identified as a doorman at the Sheraton Miyako Hotel, where Yamaguchi took the intoxicated Ito. The doorman had spoken to the police before an arrest warrant had been issued when the investigation was first under way and gave formal testimony as evidence thereafter. However, in the aftermath of the retracted arrest warrant, and a failed appeal to the Prosecutorial Review Board, his testimony never saw the light of day. He was not informed by the courts about the progress of the case and only discovered Ito took it to civil court when the hearings were nearly over. In a desperate effort to speak up about what he saw that night, the doorman came forward with his statement just as the hearings had ended. Ito’s lawyers asked for the court proceeding to be reopened, but the court rejected the appeal and his statement was not submitted as evidence. In the published interview with Shukan Shincho, the doorman talked about the first time he spoke to the police on the matter. He said his memory was jogged when an investigator told him “the taxi driver suggested that you may have heard more of their conversation”—that is, the exchanges between Ito and Yamaguchi as she tried to avoid accompanying him. That night, the doorman had opened the backseat door of the taxi in the hotel driveway. “I made eye contact with Yamaguchi,” he said, “and I got an impression that he was a scary man, and he was pulling the arm of the woman who sat in the other seat, urging her to get out.”  “The woman insisted that she had to clean up the mess, she had made a mess, she sounded like a young child and I realized that she had thrown up on the floor of the car,” the doorman recalled. “When the man tried to drag her out of the car from the door on her side, she made gestures of protest, refusing to get out, and insisting on cleaning up. I thought she must have really wanted to clean or maybe she was using that as an excuse to get away from him. The man grabbed her arm and said ‘don’t bother.’” “She could barely stand or walk on her own, barely conscious and completely intoxicated repeating ‘I have to clean up,’” the doorman said, “but still she was pulled towards the hotel and I remember her letting out a loud wail as though she were crying.” He also noted the arrogance of Yamaguchi, who failed to apologize and did not offer to pay a cleaning charge, which is the custom in Japan when one has defiled a taxi.What followed was caught on the hotel’s security camera. Yamaguchi dragged a limp and incapacitated Ito into the hotel lobby. The doorman recalls the police saying, “with testimony as clear cut as this, this case is ours [to win].” However, despite this testimony and other evidence, the case was dropped. * * *No Means No Investigation* * *Ito, at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, speaking in English, said, “When I went to [the] police for the first time after the incident, the first word that I got was these things happen and we can’t investigate, which was quite shocking to hear. There’s so many reasons behind it why they use this excuse. After I heard that comment, I sort of pressured them: ‘Well I know which hotel I came out [of] so please check the CCTV,’ and they did. They found the CCTV and they said this is something, it is criminal, but yet they didn’t want to file the case, and I asked why again. The  investigator [said] that it is because he is pressured by prosecutors because our conviction rate in Japan is very high, and I believe it’s something to do with it.”Prosecutors only want to bring cases they can be absolutely sure they will win—typically their conviction rates are 99 percent—and sex crimes are hard ones to make. “That was quite surprising,” said Ito. She also noted the lack of female police officers. In 2017, fewer than 10 percent of the police force were women. “Police officers need to be educated how to deal with these victims who are traumatized with sex crimes. But my case for instance, I asked for a female police officer [and] I talked to her and after two hours she said, ‘I’m sorry I’m from the traffic department and I can’t take your report so please talk to my male co-worker who is a male investigator.’”As Ito noted, in Japan, not only are the prosecutors and police reluctant to deal with sexual crimes against women, even if they get their day in court, Japan's predominantly male judiciary is likely to find they didn't resist enough. And thus the rapists often go free. * * *Conspicuous Silence* * *After the court’s ruling in favor of Ito last week, several of the previously loud and abusive defenders of Yamaguchi suddenly went quiet. The most conspicuous silence came from Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker and protege of the prime minister, Mio Sugita, who previously gained attention for anti LGBQT remarks. In the BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, Sugita claimed Ito “was at fault as a woman, drinking with a man until she lost consciousness,” defending Yamaguchi and men as the “victim in these cases.” And her tweet from last June has come back to haunt her. Sugita wrote that Ito did not deserve to be dealt with as a genuine victim. “I don’t forgive sex crimes. It is unacceptable to force a victim to take drugs, or drag her into a car, and do things like rape her and I think the punishment should be more severe. But in an outrageous/unreasonable case like Ito Shiori—I feel anger as a woman that she is treated the same way as other rape victims who are absolutely not at fault.” The court essentially found that Yamaguchi did the things that Sugita says she can’t forgive and her underlying theme that rape victims were often somehow at fault, was not well-received either. At this point in time, she still has made no comment on the court’s findings. While some critics of Ito suddenly shut up, the netizens and trolls of Japan quickly rose to the occasion and launched a stream of invective against Ito so offensive that media outlets were at a loss what to do. The Mainichi newspaper disabled the comments on the video of Ito’s statement outside the courthouse immediately after the verdict, but one can easily watch the same video on other news channels and the comments keep rolling in: “I want to rape her, too,” was a typical comment. Others included, “This is clearly a modern comfort woman’s scheme,” referring to the Asian and European women who were coerced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during Japan’s imperial era. For the right wing, “comfort women” is a term used to denigrate any independent woman as a willing prostitute, intent on cheating men of their money* * *Did Yamaguchi Get Special Treatment?* * *In his press conference on Thursday at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, Yamaguchi accused the court of ignoring his claims and alleged there are contradictions in Ito’s statements. He called her a habitual liar  and hinted that he was now going to sue several media outlets, including The New York Times and the BBC. The only thing that seemed to give him pause was when he noticed that Shiori Ito was in the room listening to him speak, and taking notes.When The Daily Beast asked him, as a veteran journalist himself who had covered crime in Japan, did he know of any case in which the police had rescinded an arrest warrant for a felony, he did not answer the question. He probably doesn’t want to answer; numerous sources, lawyers, former prosecutors and police say that it is almost unprecedented for an arrest warrant not to be executed. For better or worse, this is how the Japanese criminal justice process typically works in felony cases. The police investigate, find evidence, then consult with the prosecutors. If the prosecutor agrees, then they go to the court and get a warrant. They make an arrest. The suspect is held for up to 23 days in jail, interrogated every day, and then a final decision is made on whether to prosecute. They can then be rearrested on different charges. The former CEO Of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, was put through this meat grinder and spent over 120 days in jail. His trial has not yet started. That wasn’t the case for Yamaguchi.Yamaguchi did insist that despite his close personal friendship with the prime minister, he had never asked for political interference on his behalf. He says he didn’t even know he was under investigation when the Takanawa police reluctantly let him depart without putting him in handcuffs as they had planned on June 8, 2015. For the most part, at the press conference Yamaguchi let his lawyer say the unpleasant things he didn’t want coming out of his own mouth. The lawyer’s supposed “bombshell” claim that Ito must be lying because she wrote in her book that her relative was a prosecutor when he was not was effectively dismissed two hours later. Ito clarified that her relative was an assistant prosecutor–fukukenji–which in Japan, is rarely differentiated from a regular prosecutor (kenji).* * *A Plea For Help* * *The circumstances that led to the criminal investigation of Yamaguchi being shelved may never be fully known. The civil court did not touch upon the previous events and it is nearly impossible to sue the Japanese government for failure to do its fiduciary duty. The Abe administration has a long history of shredding documents and cover-ups, so getting to the truth will be hard. Perhaps the last word should go to Ito, who made this plea to the media in her closing remarks, when asked about whether there was political interference in her case. Her voice cracked as she spoke.“What I want to ask for you guys is that I need your help to find out these things. I can’t do this all by myself, and I’ve been thinking when is the right time to do more investigation around it because I can’t [alone]. I need your help.” While the Abe administration seems to be rather unhelpful in her case, or to women in general, maybe there are some in or outside of the administration who are willing to help. Mari Hirayama,  a Professor in Criminal Procedure and Criminology at Hakuoh University, considers the verdict a step forward for sexual assault victims in Japan. “She could not get justice [from the]  Prosecutorial Review Board, but now she is admired worldwide. I hope this [case] inspired the reform for the Penal Code planned next year.” Indeed, the common sense ruling of the Tokyo District Court is a leap forward for equal rights in Japan, establishing one thing that should already be crystal clear––if a woman is forced to have sex without her consent, that is a crime.The crusty old men who rule Japan were able to stop one arrest, but Ito has started something unprecedented in this country. The attempt to muzzle the rape investigation has backfired and instead ignited a movement, lead by Ito, who is no longer a victim but a hero for many. In its schemes to silence Ito, the government unwittingly gave voice to an army of women who are fed up with suffering silently and will not be stopped until true justice is served. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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[banelemental]

TOKYO–A civil court here handed down a landmark ruling last week in the case of freelance journalist Shiori Ito, 30, who alleged she was raped in 2015 by a Noriyuki Yamaguchi, 53, a good friend and biographer of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The court ruled Yamaguchi must pay over ¥3.3 million yen ($30,000)  in damages. Since Ito went public with the charges in 2017 after police efforts to pursue the case were quashed, she has become a vital symbol for the still fledgling MeToo movement in Japan; her story is a microcosm of the problems women face here in a nation where there are far too many men who share the attitudes of a Harvey Weinstein.Japan’s Big MeToo Moment: You Think Hollywood Abuses Women? You Oughta See Tokyo.Yet this victory in a civil case also reopens the very ugly question of why Yamaguchi never was prosecuted for his alleged crime. The police had a warrant prepared on sexual assault charges and were planning to arrest Yamaguchi at Narita airport on June 8, 2015, but were stopped at the last minute by a high-ranking police bureaucrat known as “Prime Minister Abe’s attack dog” who then scuttled the original investigation.The Daily Beast has reported on this case from the very start, following the chain of evidence and documenting the suspicious twists. The civil lawsuits for damages incurred during sexual assault were filed by Ito in September of 2017. She accused Yamaguchi, a former Washington bureau chief for the Tokyo Broadcasting Service, of sexually assaulting her on April 4, 2015, inflicting mental and physical damage. Ito asserted that she met Yamaguchi at a restaurant after he offered to help further her career as a journalist. She claimed that after a few drinks she lost consciousness. When she awoke she was in his hotel room and he was raping her. She said she believed she may have been drugged. Yamaguchi later countersued, claiming that Ito had defamed him, and sought 130 million yen ($1.1 million) in damages. Is Japan’s Top Politician Behind a Shameful Rape Cover-Up?The plight of Shiori Ito became world-wide news and the subject of a BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, because in Japan it is even more rare than in other countries for victims to come forward with allegations of sexual assault.Interest has been heightened since the alleged assailant is a close personal friend of the prime minister and has written two books about him. Add to that the role a close ally of the prime minister played in scuttling the investigation and it’s not surprising that cries of foul play have been heard inside and outside Japan. On December 18 the Tokyo District Court, Judge Akihiro Suzuki presiding, found Ito’s account of the attack was consistent and believable. The court noted that Ito had reported the rape to the police, sought the support of medical professionals, and that the testimony of witnesses and surveillance footage from the hotel all indicated that Ito was unconscious and unable to consent to sexual intercourse. Even before reaching the hotel, the court noted, the semi-unconscious Ito asked the taxi driver to take her to the nearest train station, but Yamaguchi insisted the driver take the pair to the hotel.In addition to these findings, the court dismissed Yamaguchi’s defamation claims, effectively throwing out his counter lawsuit. The judge indicated that the information disclosed by Ito was in the public interest, meant to show the obstacles that rape victims face in society, and therefore was not slanderous. * * *What The Doorman Saw* * *Yamaguchi says he will appeal the ruling, but he might want to reconsider in light of what appears to be damning new evidence. On  December 19, after the trial was over, the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho, which first brought the case to light in a series of exposés going back to 2017, published an explosive scoop. Shukan Shincho obtained a copy of a written statement from a key witness that had been submitted to the court too late to be included in the civil case. The witness is identified as a doorman at the Sheraton Miyako Hotel, where Yamaguchi took the intoxicated Ito. The doorman had spoken to the police before an arrest warrant had been issued when the investigation was first under way and gave formal testimony as evidence thereafter. However, in the aftermath of the retracted arrest warrant, and a failed appeal to the Prosecutorial Review Board, his testimony never saw the light of day. He was not informed by the courts about the progress of the case and only discovered Ito took it to civil court when the hearings were nearly over. In a desperate effort to speak up about what he saw that night, the doorman came forward with his statement just as the hearings had ended. Ito’s lawyers asked for the court proceeding to be reopened, but the court rejected the appeal and his statement was not submitted as evidence. In the published interview with Shukan Shincho, the doorman talked about the first time he spoke to the police on the matter. He said his memory was jogged when an investigator told him “the taxi driver suggested that you may have heard more of their conversation”—that is, the exchanges between Ito and Yamaguchi as she tried to avoid accompanying him. That night, the doorman had opened the backseat door of the taxi in the hotel driveway. “I made eye contact with Yamaguchi,” he said, “and I got an impression that he was a scary man, and he was pulling the arm of the woman who sat in the other seat, urging her to get out.”  “The woman insisted that she had to clean up the mess, she had made a mess, she sounded like a young child and I realized that she had thrown up on the floor of the car,” the doorman recalled. “When the man tried to drag her out of the car from the door on her side, she made gestures of protest, refusing to get out, and insisting on cleaning up. I thought she must have really wanted to clean or maybe she was using that as an excuse to get away from him. The man grabbed her arm and said ‘don’t bother.’” “She could barely stand or walk on her own, barely conscious and completely intoxicated repeating ‘I have to clean up,’” the doorman said, “but still she was pulled towards the hotel and I remember her letting out a loud wail as though she were crying.” He also noted the arrogance of Yamaguchi, who failed to apologize and did not offer to pay a cleaning charge, which is the custom in Japan when one has defiled a taxi.What followed was caught on the hotel’s security camera. Yamaguchi dragged a limp and incapacitated Ito into the hotel lobby. The doorman recalls the police saying, “with testimony as clear cut as this, this case is ours [to win].” However, despite this testimony and other evidence, the case was dropped. * * *No Means No Investigation* * *Ito, at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, speaking in English, said, “When I went to [the] police for the first time after the incident, the first word that I got was these things happen and we can’t investigate, which was quite shocking to hear. There’s so many reasons behind it why they use this excuse. After I heard that comment, I sort of pressured them: ‘Well I know which hotel I came out [of] so please check the CCTV,’ and they did. They found the CCTV and they said this is something, it is criminal, but yet they didn’t want to file the case, and I asked why again. The  investigator [said] that it is because he is pressured by prosecutors because our conviction rate in Japan is very high, and I believe it’s something to do with it.”Prosecutors only want to bring cases they can be absolutely sure they will win—typically their conviction rates are 99 percent—and sex crimes are hard ones to make. “That was quite surprising,” said Ito. She also noted the lack of female police officers. In 2017, fewer than 10 percent of the police force were women. “Police officers need to be educated how to deal with these victims who are traumatized with sex crimes. But my case for instance, I asked for a female police officer [and] I talked to her and after two hours she said, ‘I’m sorry I’m from the traffic department and I can’t take your report so please talk to my male co-worker who is a male investigator.’”As Ito noted, in Japan, not only are the prosecutors and police reluctant to deal with sexual crimes against women, even if they get their day in court, Japan's predominantly male judiciary is likely to find they didn't resist enough. And thus the rapists often go free. * * *Conspicuous Silence* * *After the court’s ruling in favor of Ito last week, several of the previously loud and abusive defenders of Yamaguchi suddenly went quiet. The most conspicuous silence came from Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker and protege of the prime minister, Mio Sugita, who previously gained attention for anti LGBQT remarks. In the BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, Sugita claimed Ito “was at fault as a woman, drinking with a man until she lost consciousness,” defending Yamaguchi and men as the “victim in these cases.” And her tweet from last June has come back to haunt her. Sugita wrote that Ito did not deserve to be dealt with as a genuine victim. “I don’t forgive sex crimes. It is unacceptable to force a victim to take drugs, or drag her into a car, and do things like rape her and I think the punishment should be more severe. But in an outrageous/unreasonable case like Ito Shiori—I feel anger as a woman that she is treated the same way as other rape victims who are absolutely not at fault.” The court essentially found that Yamaguchi did the things that Sugita says she can’t forgive and her underlying theme that rape victims were often somehow at fault, was not well-received either. At this point in time, she still has made no comment on the court’s findings. While some critics of Ito suddenly shut up, the netizens and trolls of Japan quickly rose to the occasion and launched a stream of invective against Ito so offensive that media outlets were at a loss what to do. The Mainichi newspaper disabled the comments on the video of Ito’s statement outside the courthouse immediately after the verdict, but one can easily watch the same video on other news channels and the comments keep rolling in: “I want to rape her, too,” was a typical comment. Others included, “This is clearly a modern comfort woman’s scheme,” referring to the Asian and European women who were coerced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during Japan’s imperial era. For the right wing, “comfort women” is a term used to denigrate any independent woman as a willing prostitute, intent on cheating men of their money* * *Did Yamaguchi Get Special Treatment?* * *In his press conference on Thursday at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, Yamaguchi accused the court of ignoring his claims and alleged there are contradictions in Ito’s statements. He called her a habitual liar  and hinted that he was now going to sue several media outlets, including The New York Times and the BBC. The only thing that seemed to give him pause was when he noticed that Shiori Ito was in the room listening to him speak, and taking notes.When The Daily Beast asked him, as a veteran journalist himself who had covered crime in Japan, did he know of any case in which the police had rescinded an arrest warrant for a felony, he did not answer the question. He probably doesn’t want to answer; numerous sources, lawyers, former prosecutors and police say that it is almost unprecedented for an arrest warrant not to be executed. For better or worse, this is how the Japanese criminal justice process typically works in felony cases. The police investigate, find evidence, then consult with the prosecutors. If the prosecutor agrees, then they go to the court and get a warrant. They make an arrest. The suspect is held for up to 23 days in jail, interrogated every day, and then a final decision is made on whether to prosecute. They can then be rearrested on different charges. The former CEO Of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, was put through this meat grinder and spent over 120 days in jail. His trial has not yet started. That wasn’t the case for Yamaguchi.Yamaguchi did insist that despite his close personal friendship with the prime minister, he had never asked for political interference on his behalf. He says he didn’t even know he was under investigation when the Takanawa police reluctantly let him depart without putting him in handcuffs as they had planned on June 8, 2015. For the most part, at the press conference Yamaguchi let his lawyer say the unpleasant things he didn’t want coming out of his own mouth. The lawyer’s supposed “bombshell” claim that Ito must be lying because she wrote in her book that her relative was a prosecutor when he was not was effectively dismissed two hours later. Ito clarified that her relative was an assistant prosecutor–fukukenji–which in Japan, is rarely differentiated from a regular prosecutor (kenji).* * *A Plea For Help* * *The circumstances that led to the criminal investigation of Yamaguchi being shelved may never be fully known. The civil court did not touch upon the previous events and it is nearly impossible to sue the Japanese government for failure to do its fiduciary duty. The Abe administration has a long history of shredding documents and cover-ups, so getting to the truth will be hard. Perhaps the last word should go to Ito, who made this plea to the media in her closing remarks, when asked about whether there was political interference in her case. Her voice cracked as she spoke.“What I want to ask for you guys is that I need your help to find out these things. I can’t do this all by myself, and I’ve been thinking when is the right time to do more investigation around it because I can’t [alone]. I need your help.” While the Abe administration seems to be rather unhelpful in her case, or to women in general, maybe there are some in or outside of the administration who are willing to help. Mari Hirayama,  a Professor in Criminal Procedure and Criminology at Hakuoh University, considers the verdict a step forward for sexual assault victims in Japan. “She could not get justice [from the]  Prosecutorial Review Board, but now she is admired worldwide. I hope this [case] inspired the reform for the Penal Code planned next year.” Indeed, the common sense ruling of the Tokyo District Court is a leap forward for equal rights in Japan, establishing one thing that should already be crystal clear––if a woman is forced to have sex without her consent, that is a crime.The crusty old men who rule Japan were able to stop one arrest, but Ito has started something unprecedented in this country. The attempt to muzzle the rape investigation has backfired and instead ignited a movement, lead by Ito, who is no longer a victim but a hero for many. In its schemes to silence Ito, the government unwittingly gave voice to an army of women who are fed up with suffering silently and will not be stopped until true justice is served. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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[teeky185]

TOKYO–A civil court here handed down a landmark ruling last week in the case of freelance journalist Shiori Ito, 30, who alleged she was raped in 2015 by a Noriyuki Yamaguchi, 53, a good friend and biographer of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The court ruled Yamaguchi must pay over ¥3.3 million yen ($30,000)  in damages. Since Ito went public with the charges in 2017 after police efforts to pursue the case were quashed, she has become a vital symbol for the still fledgling MeToo movement in Japan; her story is a microcosm of the problems women face here in a nation where there are far too many men who share the attitudes of a Harvey Weinstein.Japan’s Big MeToo Moment: You Think Hollywood Abuses Women? You Oughta See Tokyo.Yet this victory in a civil case also reopens the very ugly question of why Yamaguchi never was prosecuted for his alleged crime. The police had a warrant prepared on sexual assault charges and were planning to arrest Yamaguchi at Narita airport on June 8, 2015, but were stopped at the last minute by a high-ranking police bureaucrat known as “Prime Minister Abe’s attack dog” who then scuttled the original investigation.The Daily Beast has reported on this case from the very start, following the chain of evidence and documenting the suspicious twists. The civil lawsuits for damages incurred during sexual assault were filed by Ito in September of 2017. She accused Yamaguchi, a former Washington bureau chief for the Tokyo Broadcasting Service, of sexually assaulting her on April 4, 2015, inflicting mental and physical damage. Ito asserted that she met Yamaguchi at a restaurant after he offered to help further her career as a journalist. She claimed that after a few drinks she lost consciousness. When she awoke she was in his hotel room and he was raping her. She said she believed she may have been drugged. Yamaguchi later countersued, claiming that Ito had defamed him, and sought 130 million yen ($1.1 million) in damages. Is Japan’s Top Politician Behind a Shameful Rape Cover-Up?The plight of Shiori Ito became world-wide news and the subject of a BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, because in Japan it is even more rare than in other countries for victims to come forward with allegations of sexual assault.Interest has been heightened since the alleged assailant is a close personal friend of the prime minister and has written two books about him. Add to that the role a close ally of the prime minister played in scuttling the investigation and it’s not surprising that cries of foul play have been heard inside and outside Japan. On December 18 the Tokyo District Court, Judge Akihiro Suzuki presiding, found Ito’s account of the attack was consistent and believable. The court noted that Ito had reported the rape to the police, sought the support of medical professionals, and that the testimony of witnesses and surveillance footage from the hotel all indicated that Ito was unconscious and unable to consent to sexual intercourse. Even before reaching the hotel, the court noted, the semi-unconscious Ito asked the taxi driver to take her to the nearest train station, but Yamaguchi insisted the driver take the pair to the hotel.In addition to these findings, the court dismissed Yamaguchi’s defamation claims, effectively throwing out his counter lawsuit. The judge indicated that the information disclosed by Ito was in the public interest, meant to show the obstacles that rape victims face in society, and therefore was not slanderous. * * *What The Doorman Saw* * *Yamaguchi says he will appeal the ruling, but he might want to reconsider in light of what appears to be damning new evidence. On  December 19, after the trial was over, the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho, which first brought the case to light in a series of exposés going back to 2017, published an explosive scoop. Shukan Shincho obtained a copy of a written statement from a key witness that had been submitted to the court too late to be included in the civil case. The witness is identified as a doorman at the Sheraton Miyako Hotel, where Yamaguchi took the intoxicated Ito. The doorman had spoken to the police before an arrest warrant had been issued when the investigation was first under way and gave formal testimony as evidence thereafter. However, in the aftermath of the retracted arrest warrant, and a failed appeal to the Prosecutorial Review Board, his testimony never saw the light of day. He was not informed by the courts about the progress of the case and only discovered Ito took it to civil court when the hearings were nearly over. In a desperate effort to speak up about what he saw that night, the doorman came forward with his statement just as the hearings had ended. Ito’s lawyers asked for the court proceeding to be reopened, but the court rejected the appeal and his statement was not submitted as evidence. In the published interview with Shukan Shincho, the doorman talked about the first time he spoke to the police on the matter. He said his memory was jogged when an investigator told him “the taxi driver suggested that you may have heard more of their conversation”—that is, the exchanges between Ito and Yamaguchi as she tried to avoid accompanying him. That night, the doorman had opened the backseat door of the taxi in the hotel driveway. “I made eye contact with Yamaguchi,” he said, “and I got an impression that he was a scary man, and he was pulling the arm of the woman who sat in the other seat, urging her to get out.”  “The woman insisted that she had to clean up the mess, she had made a mess, she sounded like a young child and I realized that she had thrown up on the floor of the car,” the doorman recalled. “When the man tried to drag her out of the car from the door on her side, she made gestures of protest, refusing to get out, and insisting on cleaning up. I thought she must have really wanted to clean or maybe she was using that as an excuse to get away from him. The man grabbed her arm and said ‘don’t bother.’” “She could barely stand or walk on her own, barely conscious and completely intoxicated repeating ‘I have to clean up,’” the doorman said, “but still she was pulled towards the hotel and I remember her letting out a loud wail as though she were crying.” He also noted the arrogance of Yamaguchi, who failed to apologize and did not offer to pay a cleaning charge, which is the custom in Japan when one has defiled a taxi.What followed was caught on the hotel’s security camera. Yamaguchi dragged a limp and incapacitated Ito into the hotel lobby. The doorman recalls the police saying, “with testimony as clear cut as this, this case is ours [to win].” However, despite this testimony and other evidence, the case was dropped. * * *No Means No Investigation* * *Ito, at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, speaking in English, said, “When I went to [the] police for the first time after the incident, the first word that I got was these things happen and we can’t investigate, which was quite shocking to hear. There’s so many reasons behind it why they use this excuse. After I heard that comment, I sort of pressured them: ‘Well I know which hotel I came out [of] so please check the CCTV,’ and they did. They found the CCTV and they said this is something, it is criminal, but yet they didn’t want to file the case, and I asked why again. The  investigator [said] that it is because he is pressured by prosecutors because our conviction rate in Japan is very high, and I believe it’s something to do with it.”Prosecutors only want to bring cases they can be absolutely sure they will win—typically their conviction rates are 99 percent—and sex crimes are hard ones to make. “That was quite surprising,” said Ito. She also noted the lack of female police officers. In 2017, fewer than 10 percent of the police force were women. “Police officers need to be educated how to deal with these victims who are traumatized with sex crimes. But my case for instance, I asked for a female police officer [and] I talked to her and after two hours she said, ‘I’m sorry I’m from the traffic department and I can’t take your report so please talk to my male co-worker who is a male investigator.’”As Ito noted, in Japan, not only are the prosecutors and police reluctant to deal with sexual crimes against women, even if they get their day in court, Japan's predominantly male judiciary is likely to find they didn't resist enough. And thus the rapists often go free. * * *Conspicuous Silence* * *After the court’s ruling in favor of Ito last week, several of the previously loud and abusive defenders of Yamaguchi suddenly went quiet. The most conspicuous silence came from Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker and protege of the prime minister, Mio Sugita, who previously gained attention for anti LGBQT remarks. In the BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, Sugita claimed Ito “was at fault as a woman, drinking with a man until she lost consciousness,” defending Yamaguchi and men as the “victim in these cases.” And her tweet from last June has come back to haunt her. Sugita wrote that Ito did not deserve to be dealt with as a genuine victim. “I don’t forgive sex crimes. It is unacceptable to force a victim to take drugs, or drag her into a car, and do things like rape her and I think the punishment should be more severe. But in an outrageous/unreasonable case like Ito Shiori—I feel anger as a woman that she is treated the same way as other rape victims who are absolutely not at fault.” The court essentially found that Yamaguchi did the things that Sugita says she can’t forgive and her underlying theme that rape victims were often somehow at fault, was not well-received either. At this point in time, she still has made no comment on the court’s findings. While some critics of Ito suddenly shut up, the netizens and trolls of Japan quickly rose to the occasion and launched a stream of invective against Ito so offensive that media outlets were at a loss what to do. The Mainichi newspaper disabled the comments on the video of Ito’s statement outside the courthouse immediately after the verdict, but one can easily watch the same video on other news channels and the comments keep rolling in: “I want to rape her, too,” was a typical comment. Others included, “This is clearly a modern comfort woman’s scheme,” referring to the Asian and European women who were coerced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during Japan’s imperial era. For the right wing, “comfort women” is a term used to denigrate any independent woman as a willing prostitute, intent on cheating men of their money* * *Did Yamaguchi Get Special Treatment?* * *In his press conference on Thursday at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, Yamaguchi accused the court of ignoring his claims and alleged there are contradictions in Ito’s statements. He called her a habitual liar  and hinted that he was now going to sue several media outlets, including The New York Times and the BBC. The only thing that seemed to give him pause was when he noticed that Shiori Ito was in the room listening to him speak, and taking notes.When The Daily Beast asked him, as a veteran journalist himself who had covered crime in Japan, did he know of any case in which the police had rescinded an arrest warrant for a felony, he did not answer the question. He probably doesn’t want to answer; numerous sources, lawyers, former prosecutors and police say that it is almost unprecedented for an arrest warrant not to be executed. For better or worse, this is how the Japanese criminal justice process typically works in felony cases. The police investigate, find evidence, then consult with the prosecutors. If the prosecutor agrees, then they go to the court and get a warrant. They make an arrest. The suspect is held for up to 23 days in jail, interrogated every day, and then a final decision is made on whether to prosecute. They can then be rearrested on different charges. The former CEO Of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, was put through this meat grinder and spent over 120 days in jail. His trial has not yet started. That wasn’t the case for Yamaguchi.Yamaguchi did insist that despite his close personal friendship with the prime minister, he had never asked for political interference on his behalf. He says he didn’t even know he was under investigation when the Takanawa police reluctantly let him depart without putting him in handcuffs as they had planned on June 8, 2015. For the most part, at the press conference Yamaguchi let his lawyer say the unpleasant things he didn’t want coming out of his own mouth. The lawyer’s supposed “bombshell” claim that Ito must be lying because she wrote in her book that her relative was a prosecutor when he was not was effectively dismissed two hours later. Ito clarified that her relative was an assistant prosecutor–fukukenji–which in Japan, is rarely differentiated from a regular prosecutor (kenji).* * *A Plea For Help* * *The circumstances that led to the criminal investigation of Yamaguchi being shelved may never be fully known. The civil court did not touch upon the previous events and it is nearly impossible to sue the Japanese government for failure to do its fiduciary duty. The Abe administration has a long history of shredding documents and cover-ups, so getting to the truth will be hard. Perhaps the last word should go to Ito, who made this plea to the media in her closing remarks, when asked about whether there was political interference in her case. Her voice cracked as she spoke.“What I want to ask for you guys is that I need your help to find out these things. I can’t do this all by myself, and I’ve been thinking when is the right time to do more investigation around it because I can’t [alone]. I need your help.” While the Abe administration seems to be rather unhelpful in her case, or to women in general, maybe there are some in or outside of the administration who are willing to help. Mari Hirayama,  a Professor in Criminal Procedure and Criminology at Hakuoh University, considers the verdict a step forward for sexual assault victims in Japan. “She could not get justice [from the]  Prosecutorial Review Board, but now she is admired worldwide. I hope this [case] inspired the reform for the Penal Code planned next year.” Indeed, the common sense ruling of the Tokyo District Court is a leap forward for equal rights in Japan, establishing one thing that should already be crystal clear––if a woman is forced to have sex without her consent, that is a crime.The crusty old men who rule Japan were able to stop one arrest, but Ito has started something unprecedented in this country. The attempt to muzzle the rape investigation has backfired and instead ignited a movement, lead by Ito, who is no longer a victim but a hero for many. In its schemes to silence Ito, the government unwittingly gave voice to an army of women who are fed up with suffering silently and will not be stopped until true justice is served. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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[btreports]

TOKYO–A civil court here handed down a landmark ruling last week in the case of freelance journalist Shiori Ito, 30, who alleged she was raped in 2015 by a Noriyuki Yamaguchi, 53, a good friend and biographer of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The court ruled Yamaguchi must pay over ¥3.3 million yen ($30,000)  in damages. Since Ito went public with the charges in 2017 after police efforts to pursue the case were quashed, she has become a vital symbol for the still fledgling MeToo movement in Japan; her story is a microcosm of the problems women face here in a nation where there are far too many men who share the attitudes of a Harvey Weinstein.Japan’s Big MeToo Moment: You Think Hollywood Abuses Women? You Oughta See Tokyo.Yet this victory in a civil case also reopens the very ugly question of why Yamaguchi never was prosecuted for his alleged crime. The police had a warrant prepared on sexual assault charges and were planning to arrest Yamaguchi at Narita airport on June 8, 2015, but were stopped at the last minute by a high-ranking police bureaucrat known as “Prime Minister Abe’s attack dog” who then scuttled the original investigation.The Daily Beast has reported on this case from the very start, following the chain of evidence and documenting the suspicious twists. The civil lawsuits for damages incurred during sexual assault were filed by Ito in September of 2017. She accused Yamaguchi, a former Washington bureau chief for the Tokyo Broadcasting Service, of sexually assaulting her on April 4, 2015, inflicting mental and physical damage. Ito asserted that she met Yamaguchi at a restaurant after he offered to help further her career as a journalist. She claimed that after a few drinks she lost consciousness. When she awoke she was in his hotel room and he was raping her. She said she believed she may have been drugged. Yamaguchi later countersued, claiming that Ito had defamed him, and sought 130 million yen ($1.1 million) in damages. Is Japan’s Top Politician Behind a Shameful Rape Cover-Up?The plight of Shiori Ito became world-wide news and the subject of a BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, because in Japan it is even more rare than in other countries for victims to come forward with allegations of sexual assault.Interest has been heightened since the alleged assailant is a close personal friend of the prime minister and has written two books about him. Add to that the role a close ally of the prime minister played in scuttling the investigation and it’s not surprising that cries of foul play have been heard inside and outside Japan. On December 18 the Tokyo District Court, Judge Akihiro Suzuki presiding, found Ito’s account of the attack was consistent and believable. The court noted that Ito had reported the rape to the police, sought the support of medical professionals, and that the testimony of witnesses and surveillance footage from the hotel all indicated that Ito was unconscious and unable to consent to sexual intercourse. Even before reaching the hotel, the court noted, the semi-unconscious Ito asked the taxi driver to take her to the nearest train station, but Yamaguchi insisted the driver take the pair to the hotel.In addition to these findings, the court dismissed Yamaguchi’s defamation claims, effectively throwing out his counter lawsuit. The judge indicated that the information disclosed by Ito was in the public interest, meant to show the obstacles that rape victims face in society, and therefore was not slanderous. * * *What The Doorman Saw* * *Yamaguchi says he will appeal the ruling, but he might want to reconsider in light of what appears to be damning new evidence. On  December 19, after the trial was over, the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho, which first brought the case to light in a series of exposés going back to 2017, published an explosive scoop. Shukan Shincho obtained a copy of a written statement from a key witness that had been submitted to the court too late to be included in the civil case. The witness is identified as a doorman at the Sheraton Miyako Hotel, where Yamaguchi took the intoxicated Ito. The doorman had spoken to the police before an arrest warrant had been issued when the investigation was first under way and gave formal testimony as evidence thereafter. However, in the aftermath of the retracted arrest warrant, and a failed appeal to the Prosecutorial Review Board, his testimony never saw the light of day. He was not informed by the courts about the progress of the case and only discovered Ito took it to civil court when the hearings were nearly over. In a desperate effort to speak up about what he saw that night, the doorman came forward with his statement just as the hearings had ended. Ito’s lawyers asked for the court proceeding to be reopened, but the court rejected the appeal and his statement was not submitted as evidence. In the published interview with Shukan Shincho, the doorman talked about the first time he spoke to the police on the matter. He said his memory was jogged when an investigator told him “the taxi driver suggested that you may have heard more of their conversation”—that is, the exchanges between Ito and Yamaguchi as she tried to avoid accompanying him. That night, the doorman had opened the backseat door of the taxi in the hotel driveway. “I made eye contact with Yamaguchi,” he said, “and I got an impression that he was a scary man, and he was pulling the arm of the woman who sat in the other seat, urging her to get out.”  “The woman insisted that she had to clean up the mess, she had made a mess, she sounded like a young child and I realized that she had thrown up on the floor of the car,” the doorman recalled. “When the man tried to drag her out of the car from the door on her side, she made gestures of protest, refusing to get out, and insisting on cleaning up. I thought she must have really wanted to clean or maybe she was using that as an excuse to get away from him. The man grabbed her arm and said ‘don’t bother.’” “She could barely stand or walk on her own, barely conscious and completely intoxicated repeating ‘I have to clean up,’” the doorman said, “but still she was pulled towards the hotel and I remember her letting out a loud wail as though she were crying.” He also noted the arrogance of Yamaguchi, who failed to apologize and did not offer to pay a cleaning charge, which is the custom in Japan when one has defiled a taxi.What followed was caught on the hotel’s security camera. Yamaguchi dragged a limp and incapacitated Ito into the hotel lobby. The doorman recalls the police saying, “with testimony as clear cut as this, this case is ours [to win].” However, despite this testimony and other evidence, the case was dropped. * * *No Means No Investigation* * *Ito, at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, speaking in English, said, “When I went to [the] police for the first time after the incident, the first word that I got was these things happen and we can’t investigate, which was quite shocking to hear. There’s so many reasons behind it why they use this excuse. After I heard that comment, I sort of pressured them: ‘Well I know which hotel I came out [of] so please check the CCTV,’ and they did. They found the CCTV and they said this is something, it is criminal, but yet they didn’t want to file the case, and I asked why again. The  investigator [said] that it is because he is pressured by prosecutors because our conviction rate in Japan is very high, and I believe it’s something to do with it.”Prosecutors only want to bring cases they can be absolutely sure they will win—typically their conviction rates are 99 percent—and sex crimes are hard ones to make. “That was quite surprising,” said Ito. She also noted the lack of female police officers. In 2017, fewer than 10 percent of the police force were women. “Police officers need to be educated how to deal with these victims who are traumatized with sex crimes. But my case for instance, I asked for a female police officer [and] I talked to her and after two hours she said, ‘I’m sorry I’m from the traffic department and I can’t take your report so please talk to my male co-worker who is a male investigator.’”As Ito noted, in Japan, not only are the prosecutors and police reluctant to deal with sexual crimes against women, even if they get their day in court, Japan's predominantly male judiciary is likely to find they didn't resist enough. And thus the rapists often go free. * * *Conspicuous Silence* * *After the court’s ruling in favor of Ito last week, several of the previously loud and abusive defenders of Yamaguchi suddenly went quiet. The most conspicuous silence came from Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker and protege of the prime minister, Mio Sugita, who previously gained attention for anti LGBQT remarks. In the BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, Sugita claimed Ito “was at fault as a woman, drinking with a man until she lost consciousness,” defending Yamaguchi and men as the “victim in these cases.” And her tweet from last June has come back to haunt her. Sugita wrote that Ito did not deserve to be dealt with as a genuine victim. “I don’t forgive sex crimes. It is unacceptable to force a victim to take drugs, or drag her into a car, and do things like rape her and I think the punishment should be more severe. But in an outrageous/unreasonable case like Ito Shiori—I feel anger as a woman that she is treated the same way as other rape victims who are absolutely not at fault.” The court essentially found that Yamaguchi did the things that Sugita says she can’t forgive and her underlying theme that rape victims were often somehow at fault, was not well-received either. At this point in time, she still has made no comment on the court’s findings. While some critics of Ito suddenly shut up, the netizens and trolls of Japan quickly rose to the occasion and launched a stream of invective against Ito so offensive that media outlets were at a loss what to do. The Mainichi newspaper disabled the comments on the video of Ito’s statement outside the courthouse immediately after the verdict, but one can easily watch the same video on other news channels and the comments keep rolling in: “I want to rape her, too,” was a typical comment. Others included, “This is clearly a modern comfort woman’s scheme,” referring to the Asian and European women who were coerced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during Japan’s imperial era. For the right wing, “comfort women” is a term used to denigrate any independent woman as a willing prostitute, intent on cheating men of their money* * *Did Yamaguchi Get Special Treatment?* * *In his press conference on Thursday at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, Yamaguchi accused the court of ignoring his claims and alleged there are contradictions in Ito’s statements. He called her a habitual liar  and hinted that he was now going to sue several media outlets, including The New York Times and the BBC. The only thing that seemed to give him pause was when he noticed that Shiori Ito was in the room listening to him speak, and taking notes.When The Daily Beast asked him, as a veteran journalist himself who had covered crime in Japan, did he know of any case in which the police had rescinded an arrest warrant for a felony, he did not answer the question. He probably doesn’t want to answer; numerous sources, lawyers, former prosecutors and police say that it is almost unprecedented for an arrest warrant not to be executed. For better or worse, this is how the Japanese criminal justice process typically works in felony cases. The police investigate, find evidence, then consult with the prosecutors. If the prosecutor agrees, then they go to the court and get a warrant. They make an arrest. The suspect is held for up to 23 days in jail, interrogated every day, and then a final decision is made on whether to prosecute. They can then be rearrested on different charges. The former CEO Of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, was put through this meat grinder and spent over 120 days in jail. His trial has not yet started. That wasn’t the case for Yamaguchi.Yamaguchi did insist that despite his close personal friendship with the prime minister, he had never asked for political interference on his behalf. He says he didn’t even know he was under investigation when the Takanawa police reluctantly let him depart without putting him in handcuffs as they had planned on June 8, 2015. For the most part, at the press conference Yamaguchi let his lawyer say the unpleasant things he didn’t want coming out of his own mouth. The lawyer’s supposed “bombshell” claim that Ito must be lying because she wrote in her book that her relative was a prosecutor when he was not was effectively dismissed two hours later. Ito clarified that her relative was an assistant prosecutor–fukukenji–which in Japan, is rarely differentiated from a regular prosecutor (kenji).* * *A Plea For Help* * *The circumstances that led to the criminal investigation of Yamaguchi being shelved may never be fully known. The civil court did not touch upon the previous events and it is nearly impossible to sue the Japanese government for failure to do its fiduciary duty. The Abe administration has a long history of shredding documents and cover-ups, so getting to the truth will be hard. Perhaps the last word should go to Ito, who made this plea to the media in her closing remarks, when asked about whether there was political interference in her case. Her voice cracked as she spoke.“What I want to ask for you guys is that I need your help to find out these things. I can’t do this all by myself, and I’ve been thinking when is the right time to do more investigation around it because I can’t [alone]. I need your help.” While the Abe administration seems to be rather unhelpful in her case, or to women in general, maybe there are some in or outside of the administration who are willing to help. Mari Hirayama,  a Professor in Criminal Procedure and Criminology at Hakuoh University, considers the verdict a step forward for sexual assault victims in Japan. “She could not get justice [from the]  Prosecutorial Review Board, but now she is admired worldwide. I hope this [case] inspired the reform for the Penal Code planned next year.” Indeed, the common sense ruling of the Tokyo District Court is a leap forward for equal rights in Japan, establishing one thing that should already be crystal clear––if a woman is forced to have sex without her consent, that is a crime.The crusty old men who rule Japan were able to stop one arrest, but Ito has started something unprecedented in this country. The attempt to muzzle the rape investigation has backfired and instead ignited a movement, lead by Ito, who is no longer a victim but a hero for many. In its schemes to silence Ito, the government unwittingly gave voice to an army of women who are fed up with suffering silently and will not be stopped until true justice is served. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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[beautytipsfor]

A Rape Victim’s Stunning Victory Against Japan’s Powerful ‘Weinsteins’

TOKYO–A civil court here handed down a landmark ruling last week in the case of freelance journalist Shiori Ito, 30, who alleged she was raped in 2015 by a Noriyuki Yamaguchi, 53, a good friend and biographer of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The court ruled Yamaguchi must pay over ¥3.3 million yen ($30,000)  in damages. Since Ito went public with the charges in 2017 after police efforts to pursue the case were quashed, she has become a vital symbol for the still fledgling MeToo movement in Japan; her story is a microcosm of the problems women face here in a nation where there are far too many men who share the attitudes of a Harvey Weinstein.Japan’s Big MeToo Moment: You Think Hollywood Abuses Women? You Oughta See Tokyo.Yet this victory in a civil case also reopens the very ugly question of why Yamaguchi never was prosecuted for his alleged crime. The police had a warrant prepared on sexual assault charges and were planning to arrest Yamaguchi at Narita airport on June 8, 2015, but were stopped at the last minute by a high-ranking police bureaucrat known as “Prime Minister Abe’s attack dog” who then scuttled the original investigation.The Daily Beast has reported on this case from the very start, following the chain of evidence and documenting the suspicious twists. The civil lawsuits for damages incurred during sexual assault were filed by Ito in September of 2017. She accused Yamaguchi, a former Washington bureau chief for the Tokyo Broadcasting Service, of sexually assaulting her on April 4, 2015, inflicting mental and physical damage. Ito asserted that she met Yamaguchi at a restaurant after he offered to help further her career as a journalist. She claimed that after a few drinks she lost consciousness. When she awoke she was in his hotel room and he was raping her. She said she believed she may have been drugged. Yamaguchi later countersued, claiming that Ito had defamed him, and sought 130 million yen ($1.1 million) in damages. Is Japan’s Top Politician Behind a Shameful Rape Cover-Up?The plight of Shiori Ito became world-wide news and the subject of a BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, because in Japan it is even more rare than in other countries for victims to come forward with allegations of sexual assault.Interest has been heightened since the alleged assailant is a close personal friend of the prime minister and has written two books about him. Add to that the role a close ally of the prime minister played in scuttling the investigation and it’s not surprising that cries of foul play have been heard inside and outside Japan. On December 18 the Tokyo District Court, Judge Akihiro Suzuki presiding, found Ito’s account of the attack was consistent and believable. The court noted that Ito had reported the rape to the police, sought the support of medical professionals, and that the testimony of witnesses and surveillance footage from the hotel all indicated that Ito was unconscious and unable to consent to sexual intercourse. Even before reaching the hotel, the court noted, the semi-unconscious Ito asked the taxi driver to take her to the nearest train station, but Yamaguchi insisted the driver take the pair to the hotel.In addition to these findings, the court dismissed Yamaguchi’s defamation claims, effectively throwing out his counter lawsuit. The judge indicated that the information disclosed by Ito was in the public interest, meant to show the obstacles that rape victims face in society, and therefore was not slanderous. * * *What The Doorman Saw* * *Yamaguchi says he will appeal the ruling, but he might want to reconsider in light of what appears to be damning new evidence. On  December 19, after the trial was over, the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho, which first brought the case to light in a series of exposés going back to 2017, published an explosive scoop. Shukan Shincho obtained a copy of a written statement from a key witness that had been submitted to the court too late to be included in the civil case. The witness is identified as a doorman at the Sheraton Miyako Hotel, where Yamaguchi took the intoxicated Ito. The doorman had spoken to the police before an arrest warrant had been issued when the investigation was first under way and gave formal testimony as evidence thereafter. However, in the aftermath of the retracted arrest warrant, and a failed appeal to the Prosecutorial Review Board, his testimony never saw the light of day. He was not informed by the courts about the progress of the case and only discovered Ito took it to civil court when the hearings were nearly over. In a desperate effort to speak up about what he saw that night, the doorman came forward with his statement just as the hearings had ended. Ito’s lawyers asked for the court proceeding to be reopened, but the court rejected the appeal and his statement was not submitted as evidence. In the published interview with Shukan Shincho, the doorman talked about the first time he spoke to the police on the matter. He said his memory was jogged when an investigator told him “the taxi driver suggested that you may have heard more of their conversation”—that is, the exchanges between Ito and Yamaguchi as she tried to avoid accompanying him. That night, the doorman had opened the backseat door of the taxi in the hotel driveway. “I made eye contact with Yamaguchi,” he said, “and I got an impression that he was a scary man, and he was pulling the arm of the woman who sat in the other seat, urging her to get out.”  “The woman insisted that she had to clean up the mess, she had made a mess, she sounded like a young child and I realized that she had thrown up on the floor of the car,” the doorman recalled. “When the man tried to drag her out of the car from the door on her side, she made gestures of protest, refusing to get out, and insisting on cleaning up. I thought she must have really wanted to clean or maybe she was using that as an excuse to get away from him. The man grabbed her arm and said ‘don’t bother.’” “She could barely stand or walk on her own, barely conscious and completely intoxicated repeating ‘I have to clean up,’” the doorman said, “but still she was pulled towards the hotel and I remember her letting out a loud wail as though she were crying.” He also noted the arrogance of Yamaguchi, who failed to apologize and did not offer to pay a cleaning charge, which is the custom in Japan when one has defiled a taxi.What followed was caught on the hotel’s security camera. Yamaguchi dragged a limp and incapacitated Ito into the hotel lobby. The doorman recalls the police saying, “with testimony as clear cut as this, this case is ours [to win].” However, despite this testimony and other evidence, the case was dropped. * * *No Means No Investigation* * *Ito, at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, speaking in English, said, “When I went to [the] police for the first time after the incident, the first word that I got was these things happen and we can’t investigate, which was quite shocking to hear. There’s so many reasons behind it why they use this excuse. After I heard that comment, I sort of pressured them: ‘Well I know which hotel I came out [of] so please check the CCTV,’ and they did. They found the CCTV and they said this is something, it is criminal, but yet they didn’t want to file the case, and I asked why again. The  investigator [said] that it is because he is pressured by prosecutors because our conviction rate in Japan is very high, and I believe it’s something to do with it.”Prosecutors only want to bring cases they can be absolutely sure they will win—typically their conviction rates are 99 percent—and sex crimes are hard ones to make. “That was quite surprising,” said Ito. She also noted the lack of female police officers. In 2017, fewer than 10 percent of the police force were women. “Police officers need to be educated how to deal with these victims who are traumatized with sex crimes. But my case for instance, I asked for a female police officer [and] I talked to her and after two hours she said, ‘I’m sorry I’m from the traffic department and I can’t take your report so please talk to my male co-worker who is a male investigator.’”As Ito noted, in Japan, not only are the prosecutors and police reluctant to deal with sexual crimes against women, even if they get their day in court, Japan's predominantly male judiciary is likely to find they didn't resist enough. And thus the rapists often go free. * * *Conspicuous Silence* * *After the court’s ruling in favor of Ito last week, several of the previously loud and abusive defenders of Yamaguchi suddenly went quiet. The most conspicuous silence came from Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker and protege of the prime minister, Mio Sugita, who previously gained attention for anti LGBQT remarks. In the BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, Sugita claimed Ito “was at fault as a woman, drinking with a man until she lost consciousness,” defending Yamaguchi and men as the “victim in these cases.” And her tweet from last June has come back to haunt her. Sugita wrote that Ito did not deserve to be dealt with as a genuine victim. “I don’t forgive sex crimes. It is unacceptable to force a victim to take drugs, or drag her into a car, and do things like rape her and I think the punishment should be more severe. But in an outrageous/unreasonable case like Ito Shiori—I feel anger as a woman that she is treated the same way as other rape victims who are absolutely not at fault.” The court essentially found that Yamaguchi did the things that Sugita says she can’t forgive and her underlying theme that rape victims were often somehow at fault, was not well-received either. At this point in time, she still has made no comment on the court’s findings. While some critics of Ito suddenly shut up, the netizens and trolls of Japan quickly rose to the occasion and launched a stream of invective against Ito so offensive that media outlets were at a loss what to do. The Mainichi newspaper disabled the comments on the video of Ito’s statement outside the courthouse immediately after the verdict, but one can easily watch the same video on other news channels and the comments keep rolling in: “I want to rape her, too,” was a typical comment. Others included, “This is clearly a modern comfort woman’s scheme,” referring to the Asian and European women who were coerced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during Japan’s imperial era. For the right wing, “comfort women” is a term used to denigrate any independent woman as a willing prostitute, intent on cheating men of their money* * *Did Yamaguchi Get Special Treatment?* * *In his press conference on Thursday at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, Yamaguchi accused the court of ignoring his claims and alleged there are contradictions in Ito’s statements. He called her a habitual liar  and hinted that he was now going to sue several media outlets, including The New York Times and the BBC. The only thing that seemed to give him pause was when he noticed that Shiori Ito was in the room listening to him speak, and taking notes.When The Daily Beast asked him, as a veteran journalist himself who had covered crime in Japan, did he know of any case in which the police had rescinded an arrest warrant for a felony, he did not answer the question. He probably doesn’t want to answer; numerous sources, lawyers, former prosecutors and police say that it is almost unprecedented for an arrest warrant not to be executed. For better or worse, this is how the Japanese criminal justice process typically works in felony cases. The police investigate, find evidence, then consult with the prosecutors. If the prosecutor agrees, then they go to the court and get a warrant. They make an arrest. The suspect is held for up to 23 days in jail, interrogated every day, and then a final decision is made on whether to prosecute. They can then be rearrested on different charges. The former CEO Of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, was put through this meat grinder and spent over 120 days in jail. His trial has not yet started. That wasn’t the case for Yamaguchi.Yamaguchi did insist that despite his close personal friendship with the prime minister, he had never asked for political interference on his behalf. He says he didn’t even know he was under investigation when the Takanawa police reluctantly let him depart without putting him in handcuffs as they had planned on June 8, 2015. For the most part, at the press conference Yamaguchi let his lawyer say the unpleasant things he didn’t want coming out of his own mouth. The lawyer’s supposed “bombshell” claim that Ito must be lying because she wrote in her book that her relative was a prosecutor when he was not was effectively dismissed two hours later. Ito clarified that her relative was an assistant prosecutor–fukukenji–which in Japan, is rarely differentiated from a regular prosecutor (kenji).* * *A Plea For Help* * *The circumstances that led to the criminal investigation of Yamaguchi being shelved may never be fully known. The civil court did not touch upon the previous events and it is nearly impossible to sue the Japanese government for failure to do its fiduciary duty. The Abe administration has a long history of shredding documents and cover-ups, so getting to the truth will be hard. Perhaps the last word should go to Ito, who made this plea to the media in her closing remarks, when asked about whether there was political interference in her case. Her voice cracked as she spoke.“What I want to ask for you guys is that I need your help to find out these things. I can’t do this all by myself, and I’ve been thinking when is the right time to do more investigation around it because I can’t [alone]. I need your help.” While the Abe administration seems to be rather unhelpful in her case, or to women in general, maybe there are some in or outside of the administration who are willing to help. Mari Hirayama,  a Professor in Criminal Procedure and Criminology at Hakuoh University, considers the verdict a step forward for sexual assault victims in Japan. “She could not get justice [from the]  Prosecutorial Review Board, but now she is admired worldwide. I hope this [case] inspired the reform for the Penal Code planned next year.” Indeed, the common sense ruling of the Tokyo District Court is a leap forward for equal rights in Japan, establishing one thing that should already be crystal clear––if a woman is forced to have sex without her consent, that is a crime.The crusty old men who rule Japan were able to stop one arrest, but Ito has started something unprecedented in this country. The attempt to muzzle the rape investigation has backfired and instead ignited a movement, lead by Ito, who is no longer a victim but a hero for many. In its schemes to silence Ito, the government unwittingly gave voice to an army of women who are fed up with suffering silently and will not be stopped until true justice is served. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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TOKYO–A civil court here handed down a landmark ruling last week in the case of freelance journalist Shiori Ito, 30, who alleged she was raped in 2015 by a Noriyuki Yamaguchi, 53, a good friend and biographer of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The court ruled Yamaguchi must pay over ¥3.3 million yen ($30,000)  in damages. Since Ito went public with the charges in 2017 after police efforts to pursue the case were quashed, she has become a vital symbol for the still fledgling MeToo movement in Japan; her story is a microcosm of the problems women face here in a nation where there are far too many men who share the attitudes of a Harvey Weinstein.Japan’s Big MeToo Moment: You Think Hollywood Abuses Women? You Oughta See Tokyo.Yet this victory in a civil case also reopens the very ugly question of why Yamaguchi never was prosecuted for his alleged crime. The police had a warrant prepared on sexual assault charges and were planning to arrest Yamaguchi at Narita airport on June 8, 2015, but were stopped at the last minute by a high-ranking police bureaucrat known as “Prime Minister Abe’s attack dog” who then scuttled the original investigation.The Daily Beast has reported on this case from the very start, following the chain of evidence and documenting the suspicious twists. The civil lawsuits for damages incurred during sexual assault were filed by Ito in September of 2017. She accused Yamaguchi, a former Washington bureau chief for the Tokyo Broadcasting Service, of sexually assaulting her on April 4, 2015, inflicting mental and physical damage. Ito asserted that she met Yamaguchi at a restaurant after he offered to help further her career as a journalist. She claimed that after a few drinks she lost consciousness. When she awoke she was in his hotel room and he was raping her. She said she believed she may have been drugged. Yamaguchi later countersued, claiming that Ito had defamed him, and sought 130 million yen ($1.1 million) in damages. Is Japan’s Top Politician Behind a Shameful Rape Cover-Up?The plight of Shiori Ito became world-wide news and the subject of a BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, because in Japan it is even more rare than in other countries for victims to come forward with allegations of sexual assault.Interest has been heightened since the alleged assailant is a close personal friend of the prime minister and has written two books about him. Add to that the role a close ally of the prime minister played in scuttling the investigation and it’s not surprising that cries of foul play have been heard inside and outside Japan. On December 18 the Tokyo District Court, Judge Akihiro Suzuki presiding, found Ito’s account of the attack was consistent and believable. The court noted that Ito had reported the rape to the police, sought the support of medical professionals, and that the testimony of witnesses and surveillance footage from the hotel all indicated that Ito was unconscious and unable to consent to sexual intercourse. Even before reaching the hotel, the court noted, the semi-unconscious Ito asked the taxi driver to take her to the nearest train station, but Yamaguchi insisted the driver take the pair to the hotel.In addition to these findings, the court dismissed Yamaguchi’s defamation claims, effectively throwing out his counter lawsuit. The judge indicated that the information disclosed by Ito was in the public interest, meant to show the obstacles that rape victims face in society, and therefore was not slanderous. * * *What The Doorman Saw* * *Yamaguchi says he will appeal the ruling, but he might want to reconsider in light of what appears to be damning new evidence. On  December 19, after the trial was over, the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho, which first brought the case to light in a series of exposés going back to 2017, published an explosive scoop. Shukan Shincho obtained a copy of a written statement from a key witness that had been submitted to the court too late to be included in the civil case. The witness is identified as a doorman at the Sheraton Miyako Hotel, where Yamaguchi took the intoxicated Ito. The doorman had spoken to the police before an arrest warrant had been issued when the investigation was first under way and gave formal testimony as evidence thereafter. However, in the aftermath of the retracted arrest warrant, and a failed appeal to the Prosecutorial Review Board, his testimony never saw the light of day. He was not informed by the courts about the progress of the case and only discovered Ito took it to civil court when the hearings were nearly over. In a desperate effort to speak up about what he saw that night, the doorman came forward with his statement just as the hearings had ended. Ito’s lawyers asked for the court proceeding to be reopened, but the court rejected the appeal and his statement was not submitted as evidence. In the published interview with Shukan Shincho, the doorman talked about the first time he spoke to the police on the matter. He said his memory was jogged when an investigator told him “the taxi driver suggested that you may have heard more of their conversation”—that is, the exchanges between Ito and Yamaguchi as she tried to avoid accompanying him. That night, the doorman had opened the backseat door of the taxi in the hotel driveway. “I made eye contact with Yamaguchi,” he said, “and I got an impression that he was a scary man, and he was pulling the arm of the woman who sat in the other seat, urging her to get out.”  “The woman insisted that she had to clean up the mess, she had made a mess, she sounded like a young child and I realized that she had thrown up on the floor of the car,” the doorman recalled. “When the man tried to drag her out of the car from the door on her side, she made gestures of protest, refusing to get out, and insisting on cleaning up. I thought she must have really wanted to clean or maybe she was using that as an excuse to get away from him. The man grabbed her arm and said ‘don’t bother.’” “She could barely stand or walk on her own, barely conscious and completely intoxicated repeating ‘I have to clean up,’” the doorman said, “but still she was pulled towards the hotel and I remember her letting out a loud wail as though she were crying.” He also noted the arrogance of Yamaguchi, who failed to apologize and did not offer to pay a cleaning charge, which is the custom in Japan when one has defiled a taxi.What followed was caught on the hotel’s security camera. Yamaguchi dragged a limp and incapacitated Ito into the hotel lobby. The doorman recalls the police saying, “with testimony as clear cut as this, this case is ours [to win].” However, despite this testimony and other evidence, the case was dropped. * * *No Means No Investigation* * *Ito, at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, speaking in English, said, “When I went to [the] police for the first time after the incident, the first word that I got was these things happen and we can’t investigate, which was quite shocking to hear. There’s so many reasons behind it why they use this excuse. After I heard that comment, I sort of pressured them: ‘Well I know which hotel I came out [of] so please check the CCTV,’ and they did. They found the CCTV and they said this is something, it is criminal, but yet they didn’t want to file the case, and I asked why again. The  investigator [said] that it is because he is pressured by prosecutors because our conviction rate in Japan is very high, and I believe it’s something to do with it.”Prosecutors only want to bring cases they can be absolutely sure they will win—typically their conviction rates are 99 percent—and sex crimes are hard ones to make. “That was quite surprising,” said Ito. She also noted the lack of female police officers. In 2017, fewer than 10 percent of the police force were women. “Police officers need to be educated how to deal with these victims who are traumatized with sex crimes. But my case for instance, I asked for a female police officer [and] I talked to her and after two hours she said, ‘I’m sorry I’m from the traffic department and I can’t take your report so please talk to my male co-worker who is a male investigator.’”As Ito noted, in Japan, not only are the prosecutors and police reluctant to deal with sexual crimes against women, even if they get their day in court, Japan's predominantly male judiciary is likely to find they didn't resist enough. And thus the rapists often go free. * * *Conspicuous Silence* * *After the court’s ruling in favor of Ito last week, several of the previously loud and abusive defenders of Yamaguchi suddenly went quiet. The most conspicuous silence came from Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker and protege of the prime minister, Mio Sugita, who previously gained attention for anti LGBQT remarks. In the BBC documentary, Japan’s Secret Shame, Sugita claimed Ito “was at fault as a woman, drinking with a man until she lost consciousness,” defending Yamaguchi and men as the “victim in these cases.” And her tweet from last June has come back to haunt her. Sugita wrote that Ito did not deserve to be dealt with as a genuine victim. “I don’t forgive sex crimes. It is unacceptable to force a victim to take drugs, or drag her into a car, and do things like rape her and I think the punishment should be more severe. But in an outrageous/unreasonable case like Ito Shiori—I feel anger as a woman that she is treated the same way as other rape victims who are absolutely not at fault.” The court essentially found that Yamaguchi did the things that Sugita says she can’t forgive and her underlying theme that rape victims were often somehow at fault, was not well-received either. At this point in time, she still has made no comment on the court’s findings. While some critics of Ito suddenly shut up, the netizens and trolls of Japan quickly rose to the occasion and launched a stream of invective against Ito so offensive that media outlets were at a loss what to do. The Mainichi newspaper disabled the comments on the video of Ito’s statement outside the courthouse immediately after the verdict, but one can easily watch the same video on other news channels and the comments keep rolling in: “I want to rape her, too,” was a typical comment. Others included, “This is clearly a modern comfort woman’s scheme,” referring to the Asian and European women who were coerced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during Japan’s imperial era. For the right wing, “comfort women” is a term used to denigrate any independent woman as a willing prostitute, intent on cheating men of their money* * *Did Yamaguchi Get Special Treatment?* * *In his press conference on Thursday at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, Yamaguchi accused the court of ignoring his claims and alleged there are contradictions in Ito’s statements. He called her a habitual liar  and hinted that he was now going to sue several media outlets, including The New York Times and the BBC. The only thing that seemed to give him pause was when he noticed that Shiori Ito was in the room listening to him speak, and taking notes.When The Daily Beast asked him, as a veteran journalist himself who had covered crime in Japan, did he know of any case in which the police had rescinded an arrest warrant for a felony, he did not answer the question. He probably doesn’t want to answer; numerous sources, lawyers, former prosecutors and police say that it is almost unprecedented for an arrest warrant not to be executed. For better or worse, this is how the Japanese criminal justice process typically works in felony cases. The police investigate, find evidence, then consult with the prosecutors. If the prosecutor agrees, then they go to the court and get a warrant. They make an arrest. The suspect is held for up to 23 days in jail, interrogated every day, and then a final decision is made on whether to prosecute. They can then be rearrested on different charges. The former CEO Of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, was put through this meat grinder and spent over 120 days in jail. His trial has not yet started. That wasn’t the case for Yamaguchi.Yamaguchi did insist that despite his close personal friendship with the prime minister, he had never asked for political interference on his behalf. He says he didn’t even know he was under investigation when the Takanawa police reluctantly let him depart without putting him in handcuffs as they had planned on June 8, 2015. For the most part, at the press conference Yamaguchi let his lawyer say the unpleasant things he didn’t want coming out of his own mouth. The lawyer’s supposed “bombshell” claim that Ito must be lying because she wrote in her book that her relative was a prosecutor when he was not was effectively dismissed two hours later. Ito clarified that her relative was an assistant prosecutor–fukukenji–which in Japan, is rarely differentiated from a regular prosecutor (kenji).* * *A Plea For Help* * *The circumstances that led to the criminal investigation of Yamaguchi being shelved may never be fully known. The civil court did not touch upon the previous events and it is nearly impossible to sue the Japanese government for failure to do its fiduciary duty. The Abe administration has a long history of shredding documents and cover-ups, so getting to the truth will be hard. Perhaps the last word should go to Ito, who made this plea to the media in her closing remarks, when asked about whether there was political interference in her case. Her voice cracked as she spoke.“What I want to ask for you guys is that I need your help to find out these things. I can’t do this all by myself, and I’ve been thinking when is the right time to do more investigation around it because I can’t [alone]. I need your help.” While the Abe administration seems to be rather unhelpful in her case, or to women in general, maybe there are some in or outside of the administration who are willing to help. Mari Hirayama,  a Professor in Criminal Procedure and Criminology at Hakuoh University, considers the verdict a step forward for sexual assault victims in Japan. “She could not get justice [from the]  Prosecutorial Review Board, but now she is admired worldwide. I hope this [case] inspired the reform for the Penal Code planned next year.” Indeed, the common sense ruling of the Tokyo District Court is a leap forward for equal rights in Japan, establishing one thing that should already be crystal clear––if a woman is forced to have sex without her consent, that is a crime.The crusty old men who rule Japan were able to stop one arrest, but Ito has started something unprecedented in this country. The attempt to muzzle the rape investigation has backfired and instead ignited a movement, lead by Ito, who is no longer a victim but a hero for many. In its schemes to silence Ito, the government unwittingly gave voice to an army of women who are fed up with suffering silently and will not be stopped until true justice is served. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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When protesters took to the streets to protest the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, many of their signs bore two words: “me too.”

The words were an expression of solidarity with Christine Blasey Ford, who says that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school, and with a movement that has gained nationwide attention in the last year. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) even made reference to it in her speech announcing that she would vote to confirm Kavanaugh despite the allegations: “The #MeToo movement,” she said, “is real.”

Dozens of protesters against the confirmation of Republican Supreme court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh gather outside of Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer’s office on the afternoon of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony, on September 27, 2018. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Founded by Tarana Burke more than a decade ago, #MeToo came to new prominence in October 2017, after women came forward publicly with allegations of sexual harassment and assault by producer Harvey Weinstein. In the weeks and months that followed, the movement gained steam as more and more Americans shared their own stories of being harassed or assaulted in the workplace by people — most of them men — in positions of power. Over time, #MeToo became a broader conversation, not just about workplace harassment and assault, but about coercive and abusive behavior outside of work as well.

“The #MeToo movement is about survivors reclaiming our power,” Carmen Perez, co-chair of the Women’s March, told Vox. “It is also a movement of accountability on violence against women and sexism.”

“The #MeToo movement is about survivors reclaiming our power”

A year after the movement entered its most public phase, its long-term effects remain uncertain. Some high-profile people — Weinstein, Mario Batali, Al Franken, and Les Moonves, to name a few — were fired or stepped away from their job as a result of the allegations against them.

Others, like Kavanaugh and President Donald Trump, have remained in positions of power. And while some workplaces have made changes to address sexual harassment, it’s not yet clear whether industries will make the larger reforms necessary to truly keep workers safe. Meanwhile, the costs of coming forward, for survivors, have not lessened — according to her lawyer, Christine Blasey Ford is receiving “unending” death threats and cannot return to her home.

For many, Kavanaugh’s confirmation laid bare how little has changed since #MeToo rose to prominence. But Ford’s public testimony resulted in an outpouring of support from survivors and their allies around the country, many of whom have now focused their attention on the midterm elections in November.

For this story, Vox asked activists, journalists, and others across industries to answer a single question: “What is the #MeToo movement?” The answers varied in their emphasis — a movement once focused on sexual violence has, for many, become broader. But taken together, they made one thing clear: While #MeToo’s position in the national consciousness may have shifted several times over the past year, the movement is far from over.

Brenda Gutierrez (third from left) and Tarana Burke (center) lead the “Take Back The Workplace March” and “#MeToo Survivors March & Rally” at Producers Guild of America on November 12, 2017, in Beverly Hills, California. Gabriel Olsen/WireImage

“#MeToo is a movement of survivors and their supporters, powered by courage, determined to end sexual violence and harassment,” Ai-jen Poo, executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, told Vox. “We prioritize the leadership and healing of survivors, especially the least visible, most vulnerable among us. And we are growing in our power.”

The phrase “me too” was in use as expression of survivor solidarity long before the allegations against Weinstein became public. In 2006, activist Tarana Burke heard repeated reports of sexual violence in her work with girls through a nonprofit she had co-founded, Just Be Inc. She started the Me Too campaign that year “to spread a message for survivors: You’re heard, you’re understood,” she told Vox in 2017.

On October 5, 2017, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey of the New York Times reported that Weinstein had reached at least eight settlements with women over the preceding decades, regarding claims of sexual harassment, unwanted touching, and other misconduct. Among those who spoke to the Times was actress Ashley Judd, who said Weinstein had invited her to what she thought was a business meeting in 1997, then appeared in a bathrobe and asked her to watch him shower. “Women have been talking about Harvey amongst ourselves for a long time,” Judd said, “and it’s simply beyond time to have the conversation publicly.”

Protesters attend a Me Too rally to denounce sexual harassment and assaults of women in Los Angeles, California on November 12, 2017. Ronen Tivony/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The conversation soon grew. On October 10, a story by Ronan Farrow of the New Yorker revealed more allegations, including one by actress and director Asia Argento, who said Weinstein had raped her. (Argento herself would later be accused of sexual assault by actor Jimmy Bennett.) In the coming months, more than 80 women would report sexual harassment or assault by Weinstein.

In a statement to the Times on October 5, Weinstein said, “I appreciate the way I’ve behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it.” But he has denied committing any crimes.

On October 15, as the number of allegations grew, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted a call to survivors of assault and harassment to post “me too” as a status.

The response was enormous. Within 10 days, 1.7 million tweets containing the hashtag #MeToo were sent, according to Twitter, and 85 countries had more than 1,000 tweets posted on the hashtag. Countless people — especially, but not exclusively, women — began to speak publicly about experiences they’d never talked about before.

Some of them started talking to reporters. Kantor, Twohey, Farrow, and others played a pivotal role in exposing allegations against a variety of powerful people. After Weinstein came celebrities like actor Kevin Spacey, who was accused by multiple men of sexual harassment or assault, and by some of making advances toward them when they were underage (he was fired from Netflix’s House of Cards and removed from the movie All the Money in the World); media figures like Charlie Rose, who was accused of sexual harassment by multiple women (he was fired by CBS, PBS, and Bloomberg); and others like chef Mario Batali, who was accused of groping or inappropriate touching by several women (he stepped away from his restaurants).

“This isn’t just a Democratic issue, this is a Republican issue, an American issue, and most importantly a human issue.”

Politicians on both sides of the aisle, from Roy Moore to Al Franken, become the subject of allegations. “This isn’t just a Democratic issue, this is a Republican issue, an American issue, and most importantly a human issue,” Jennifer Pierotti Lim, co-founder of the group Republican Women for Progress, told Vox.

Sparked in large part by wealthy, white, Hollywood actresses, the public conversation around the movement in 2017 did not necessarily serve all survivors equally. Harassment against women of color, especially those working in low-wage industries like restaurants, hotels, or agriculture, received less media coverage than the experiences of women with boldface names. Republican women sometimes found themselves isolated when they spoke out about harassment or assault within their own party.

“I think #MeToo is both a symptom and a cause of a lot of the awful coming out of the GOP right now,” Meghan Milloy, another co-founder of Republican Women for Progress, told Vox. “It’s a symptom coming from decades of a country empowering old white dudes where the women finally hit their breaking point. And it’s a cause because it’s gotten so many of our elected old white dudes to become incredibly defensive of their kind and do things like pushing through a Supreme Court nominee who was credibly accused of sexual assault.”

Discussions of #MeToo also typically focused on women, often eliding the experiences of men and nonbinary people.

“The story is not so easy as ‘cis men rape, cis women are victims,’ and I think we do ourselves an injustice when we oversimplify the issue in this way,” KC Clements, a writer and speaker who has written about barriers facing transgender survivors, told Vox. “There are millions of stories of sexual assault out there, many of them existing at the margins where few people are willing to listen or believe — many like mine as one of the more than one in two nonbinary AFAB [assigned female at birth] people who have experienced sexual assault in their lifetimes.”

More than 300 actresses, producers, and others attempted to address some of the inequalities around the movement in early January 2018 by starting Time’s Up, a group dedicated to fighting harassment through, among other tools, a legal defense fund geared toward helping survivors in low-wage jobs. “#MeToo is the next step on what has been the long journey towards a world where everyone, especially women, can go to work, school or pursue their life’s work in safety, dignity, and with respect, and have the equal opportunity as others to reach their full potential,” Tina Tchen, a litigator who is part of the leadership team of the Time’s Up legal defense fund, told Vox.

Tina Tchen, then Assistant to President Obama, (left) talks to Rep. Elaina Holmes Norton (D-DC) during an event marking the 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act on June 10, 2013. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Time’s Up joined groups like the Alianza Nacional de Campesinas and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, whose members were already speaking out and working against harassment in farming and other industries.

As Rebecca Carroll, a cultural critic and editor of special projects for WNYC, put it to Vox, “The #MeToo movement is a prelude to an #UsAlways movement — women of all racial, ethnic and class backgrounds have been trying to make our way across these divisive lines for centuries; to figure out what solidarity means, what intersectional means, how to strengthen one another rather than compete or antagonize. The #MeToo movement has given us a connective thread, an important tool — a tool, not the tool — to help us find our way to each other at our strongest and most vulnerable.”

“The #MeToo movement is a prelude to an #UsAlways movement”

By the end of 2017, a nationwide — perhaps worldwide — reckoning on sexual misconduct was afoot, and even those who had been able to ignore the problem in the past began to recognize its magnitude. But the movement soon sparked a backlash.

On January 13, 2018, Katie Way of the website Babe.net reported on allegations by a woman she called Grace (not her real name), who said that comedian Aziz Ansari had pressured her for sex while they were on a date. “It took a really long time for me to validate this as sexual assault,” she told Way.

But others said her account did not belong in the same public conversation as women’s reports of assault and harassment by Weinstein and others. HLN host Ashleigh Banfield called Grace’s experience nothing more than a “bad date.”

“The #MeToo movement has righted a lot of wrongs, and it has made your career path much smoother,” Banfield said, directing her remarks at Grace. “Yet you looked that gift horse in the mouth and chiseled away at that powerful movement with your public accusation.”

Modern Romance, published by Aziz Ansari and American sociologist Eric Klinenberg on June 16, 2015, was an investigative research book on the complexities of modern-day dating. John Lamparski/WireImage

Her comments were part of a larger backlash to the #MeToo movement, much of which focused on the concern that different types of sexual misconduct would be lumped together and punished in the same way. Some of this criticism also centered on the Shitty Media Men list, a crowdsourced, anonymous document created to help women warn each other about men in media and publishing who had been accused of harassment, assault, or other misconduct. The list, which was initially intended to be private, spread widely, and soon sparked criticism.

“One man is accused of ‘secretly removing condom during sex,’ with no claim of workplace misconduct at all,” wrote Andrew Sullivan at New York magazine. “Another is damned for ‘flirting,’ another for taking ‘credit for ideas of women of color,’ another for ‘multiple employee affairs, inappropriate conversation, in general a huge disgusting sleaze ball.’ And this chorus of minor offenses is on the same list as brutal rapes, physical assaults, brazen threats, unspeakable cruelty, violence, and misogyny.”

In January, journalist Moira Donegan identified herself as the list’s creator in an essay for the Cut, and addressed some criticisms of the document. “No one confused a crude remark for a rape, and efforts were made to contextualize the incidents with notes,” she said. “But the premise was accepted that all of these behaviors were things that might make someone uncomfortable and that individuals should be able to choose for themselves what behavior they could tolerate and what they would rather avoid.”

To some degree, criticisms of #MeToo have persisted. The Kavanaugh confirmation fight reinvigorated many such criticisms, some rooted in myths and misconceptions about sexual harassment and assault. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, for instance, reportedly defended Kavanaugh by saying that the allegations against him were not as bad as those against Weinstein. She echoed the argument made by other #MeToo critics that accusations have to be as serious as those against Weinstein in order to be deserving of public attention.

Despite such criticisms, American women have generally been supportive of #MeToo. In a Vox/Morning Consult poll conducted in March, 69 percent of women said they supported the movement. Many had concerns about #MeToo — 63 percent were worried men would be falsely accused, and 60 percent were worried that women would be denied opportunities because men would be afraid to work with them. But in focus groups Vox conducted along with the polling firm PerryUndem, women’s worries about the movement were typically rooted in a desire for it to succeed in its goal of reducing harassment and assault.

One way to measure the impact of #MeToo is to look at the consequences faced by powerful people who have been the subject of sexual misconduct allegations. About a year after Kantor and Twohey first reported on the allegations against him, Weinstein has not only lost his job at the company he co-founded — he has also been indicted on charges of rape and predatory sexual assault. He has pleaded not guilty, and is currently free on bail; his next court appearance is scheduled for November.

He is one of relatively few powerful people to face criminal charges as a result of allegations made during the current phase of #MeToo. In some cases, that’s because the allegations don’t constitute criminal offenses. In others, it’s because the statute of limitations has run out. Whatever the case, we have yet to see the first highly visible people both accused and convicted in the era of #MeToo. Bill Cosby and former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar have been sentenced since the movement began, but their charges stemmed from allegations made many years ago.

Meanwhile, high-profile people accused of sexual misconduct as part of #MeToo, from Louis C.K. to Matt Lauer to Charlie Rose to Aziz Ansari, have reportedly been planning or executing comebacks. On October 5, 2018, a year to the day after Kantor and Twohey published their story about Weinstein, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) announced that she would vote to confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, despite the allegations made by Ford and others. He was confirmed and sworn in the following day and continues to deny the allegations.

LightRocket via Getty Images

President Trump said that many women were “extremely happy” with the confirmation, because “they’re thinking of their sons, they’re thinking of their husbands, their brothers, their uncles, and others.” Trump himself has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen women, but none of those allegations stopped him from being elected president. Kavanaugh’s confirmation came almost exactly two years after the publication of the Access Hollywood tape on which Trump could be heard bragging about his ability to grab women “by the pussy.”

The Kavanaugh vote, following Ford’s wrenching testimony, has led many to consider what American society still demands of survivors: that they speak publicly about some of the most painful moments of their lives, facing blame, shaming, and disbelief, all in the hope of reforms that may never come.

“The #MeToo movement lurches forward over a path of scars,” wrote Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post, after Ford testified. “The change is so slow and the sacrifice it demands so great.”

Many were also chagrined by the fact that Collins, a woman and an ostensibly moderate Republican, cast her vote for Kavanaugh. For some, it recalled the fact that 53 percent of white female voters cast their votes for Trump in 2016. “White women benefit from patriarchy by trading on their whiteness to monopolize resources for mutual gain,” Alexis Grenell wrote at the New York Times after the Kavanaugh vote. “In return they’re placed on a pedestal to be ‘cherished and revered,’ as Speaker Paul D. Ryan has said about women, but all the while denied basic rights.”

“We have to stay vigilant,” Carroll told Vox, “because #UsAlways also means All of Us. I would say white women in particular need to be mindful of that in their vigilance.”

But despite the outcome of the vote, Ford’s testimony brought with it an outpouring of support that was striking in its scope.

“I had not planned to share my story,” wrote activist Ana María Archila at USA Today. “But Christine Blasey Ford told her story to protect our country and, in solidarity with her and as a way to thank her, I decided to tell mine.”

Meanwhile, #MeToo has always been about more than the toppling of a few high-profile men. Around the country, workers continue to organize and advocate for freedom from harassment. In September, McDonald’s workers in 10 cities went on strike to protest harassment, after they said the company failed to address complaints.

“#MeToo means I no longer have to be silent when I’m harassed at work”

“#MeToo means I no longer have to be silent when I’m harassed at work,” Barbara Johnson, a McDonald’s worker who filed a harassment complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in September, told Vox.

And now, many survivors and their supporters are turning their focus to the midterm elections in November. As Jess Davidson, executive director of the group End Rape on Campus, told Vox in September, “survivors will be turning out and voting.”

It’s too soon to tell what effect, if any, the #MeToo movement will have at the ballot box. What is certain is that the movement isn’t finished.

“We have to go hand in hand, with one united voice, into a future without victims, a world of #MeTooNoMas,” said Nely Rodriguez, a staff member with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. “That is the future we are seeking.”

Original Source -> The #MeToo movement and its evolution, explained

via The Conservative Brief

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