U.S. military charges 4 Marines with gang raping woman

Kyodo News
Feb 15, 2008

HIROSHIMA — Four U.S. Marines have been charged with gang raping a Japanese woman last October in violation of the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, the U.S. Marine Corps' Iwakuni Air Station in Yamaguchi Prefecture said Thursday.

While the U.S. military is in the process of deciding whether to court martial the four, who belong to the Iwakuni station, Japanese prosecutors dropped gang-rape charges against them in November.
The Iwakuni station said the U.S. military pressed charges against the four men in December for sexually assaulting the woman, stealing cash from her and disobeying orders.
The 20-year-old woman told a preliminary hearing at the Iwakuni station on Thursday that she had been raped by the four men, aged between 20 and 39.
The hearing is being held to determine whether the four will be tried by court martial. It will continue Friday.
The woman said that although she had agreed to have sex with one of the four, the other three joined in and she was raped by all four men.
Asked why she did not tell the police about consenting to sex with one of the four, she said, "I was ashamed of behaving so rashly."
The woman said that after the four men gang raped her, they threw her bag, shoes and other belongings away and stole almost all of the 12,000 yen she had in her wallet.
Earlier, Hiroshima prefectural police investigated the case on suspicion that the four forced the woman into a car, raped her and stole cash from her purse in the city of Hiroshima in the early hours of Oct 14.
But the police did not arrest the four because of some inconsistencies in the case. Instead they decided to send their investigative reports to prosecutors in accordance with the Code of Criminal Procedure.
In November, the Hiroshima District Public Prosecutors Office decided not to indict them.