The drama never ends on Okinawa:
Initial media reports in the latest case said the woman was in Japan on a visa as an entertainer and that the soldier told investigators he paid her for sex at an Okinawa City hotel.
An employee of the hotel told Japanese reporters the soldier and woman checked into the hotel at 10 p.m. Feb. 17 and that he left at 9 a.m.
The rape allegation grew out of her visit to a local hospital for treatment for serious bleeding, according to media reports.
During a regular session of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly on Thursday, Police Commissioner Hachiro Tokutsu told legislators that a 21-year-old Philippine woman was in the hospital and the investigation is moving slowly because she is not fluent in Japanese or English. [Stars & Stripes]
A sex worker in a hotel room claiming to be raped by a GI, I don’t know what happened, so draw your own conclusions. The other story involves the molestation of a American student by a local Okinawan worker:
Military and local police are investigating allegations that a janitor at Lester Middle School molested a male student in a school restroom.
The investigation was confirmed Thursday by Department of Defense Dependents Schools-Pacific, but few details were released.
“We are cooperating fully with the investigation, and the employee has been relieved of duty by the contractor,” Chip Steitz, DODDS-Pacific public affairs officer, wrote in response to a Stripes query.
During a telephone interview, he said the janitor was employed by a Japanese vendor who provided services to the school.
“Because the investigation is ongoing we cannot comment further,” he said.
The incident occurred Feb. 11, Steitz said. It was made public Thursday after the mother of another student called Stars and Stripes to ask why the incident had not been reported in the media.
“When terrible things happen by Americans off base, the media is all over it, and now here we are all restricted to base,” she said, referring to the uproar over the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl by a Marine staff sergeant. “But why hasn’t this been reported?” [Stars & Stripes]
The final story involves a Marine suspected of counterfeiting:
An unnamed Marine on Okinawa is the target of an investigation into a counterfeiting scheme, Okinawa police say.
According to police, the Marine, believed to be in his early 20s, passed dozens of bogus $20 bills at off-base stores in the central Okinawa city of Uruma, which hosts several Marine bases.
However, Marine officials deny Japanese press reports that the man is being held by military police.
“There have been no arrests made in conjunction with the alleged counterfeiting incident,” Marine officials wrote last week in an e-mail response to Stars and Stripes. [Stars & Stripes]
And so the drama on Okinawa continues.
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12:22 am on February 24th, 2008 1
Sounds like they need a period of
restrictionreflection.But seriously, sometimes when I’m playing roulette at Walker Hill, the goddamn thing hits 7 evens in a row when I’m doing Martingale’s on odd…sometimes you get a shitload of blotters on a weekday night, and there’s nothing you can do to predict or prevent it.
Lock ‘em down. That’ll keep the alcohol and sexual incidents all in the family, so to speak, but it won’t stop them.
9:02 am on February 24th, 2008 2
GIKorea,
I think your first story of the filipina may be the same as I reported in my blog but my story didn’t include the detail of her going to the hospital. See the link below:
http://exkorling.blogspot.com/2008/02/filipina-allegedly-raped-on-okinawa.html
10:22 pm on February 25th, 2008 3
Tim, I didn’t like the angle of your sneering comment that the woman claiming rape was probably a prostitute. So what? Prostitutes deserve protection from rape like anyone else.
7:56 am on February 26th, 2008 4
Brendon,
Your point is well taken, no one deserves to be raped. If my comment read like that, then I was wrong. However, my point was that if she had not been on Okinawa under false pretenses (i.e. using an “entertainer” visa as a cover for her working in a bar, which is a clear violation of Japanese law) she would not have been in the position to potentially be raped in the first place.
Tim in Angeles sendzzzzzzzzzzzz
9:53 am on February 26th, 2008 5
Brendon, I’m curious legally, and don’t want to imply that she was or wasn’t a juicy, but suppose she took the money and was satisfied with the price at the time of the act–can she later claim to have been raped, and who would bear the burden of proof in such a case?
12:53 pm on February 26th, 2008 6
12:36 am on February 27th, 2008 7
First of all, I favor full legalization of the sex trade. I don’t believe that women are well-served by either (i) a system where prostitution is endemic and illegal, therefore they have little recourse to legal protection if they choose to or are forced to work (especially if forced to work) as prostitutes; or (ii) a system where rich women get to dictate to poor women the boundaries of the poor woman’s economic activity. So understand that I approach this issue from a libertarian-conservative’s perspective.
If there’s a sex-for-money bargain, and the sex turns out to be different from what the provider thought she was getting into (“You want me to take it up the butt?!”), she’s got a right to call it off at any time, ending the transaction and refunding some or all of the money in accordance with whatever contract they had. If the customer insists on completion, it’s a rape as from the moment consent is withdrawn. It’s the same with a date, isn’t it? No means no. If the deal was for 15 minutes of hump-and-pump and minute 16 rolls around without completion, the prostitute should have a right to enforce her contract.
Look at it like a contract for house painting — if you don’t like the work the painters are doing, that’s a simple price dispute. Nobody would dream of beating up the painter or compelling him to stay and finish the job under the threat of violence.
8:32 am on February 27th, 2008 8
Wow, Brendon, you read my mind on every angle.
10:34 am on March 1st, 2008 9
“Nobody would dream of beating up the painter or compelling him to stay and finish the job under the threat of violence.”
You’ve obviously never had a boner and a bad painter at the same time. If I pay for a paint-job, I’m getting my damned paint-job!!
HA!
6:01 pm on April 28th, 2008 10
[...] more Okinawa news, the USFJ servicemember suspected of raping a Filipina girl has had charges brought against him by Japanese [...]
5:39 am on May 19th, 2008 11
[...] This rape case on Okinawa has been greatly overshadowed by the Marine rape case, but ended with the same conclusion, rape charges being dropped: [...]