Man gets 9-year sentence for high-profile kidnapping

March 12, 2018

Saitama- A Japanese court on Monday sentenced a 25-year-old man to nine years in prison for kidnapping a girl, now 17, who was found safe about two years after she went missing in Asaka, Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo, in 2014.

Satomi Matsubara, presiding judge at Saitama District Court, recognized that Kabu Terauchi had full competence to take criminal responsibility for the incident.

The judge said Terauchi was aware of the illegality of what he did because he attempted to delay the police's initial response by preparing a fake license plate for the car he used for the crime and getting the girl to write a memo to make it appear she left home at her own will.

"With no marked decline seen in his ability to tell right from wrong and to control his actions, it can be presumed that he was fully competent to take criminal responsibility," Matsubara said.

Noting that the girl was deprived of precious time in terms of physical and mental growth and suffered unimaginable harm, the judge described Terauchi's actions as "despicable and vicious."

Meanwhile, the judge suggested that the recommended sentence of 15 years in prison would be too heavy, explaining that Terauchi did not use abusive language or violence while the girl was captive and that she was under lax physical custody.

The ruling had been postponed from August last year after Terauchi threw a hearing into confusion by making strange noises and unintelligible comments.

During Monday's hearing, he listened to the ruling in a calm manner.

According to the ruling, Terauchi put the girl, a seventh grader at the time, into his car in Asaka on March 10, 2014, claiming falsely that her parents were set to divorce, and took her to his apartment in Inage Ward in the city of Chiba, east of Tokyo. He confined the girl to the Chiba apartment and his new apartment in Tokyo's Nakano Ward until March 27, 2016, leading her to suffer serious post-traumatic stress disorder. Jiji Press