Student rape mastermind jailed
By Colin Joyce in Tokyo
Published: 12:01AM GMT 03 Nov 2004
A student from an elite Japanese university who masterminded a series of gang rapes by privileged students was jailed for 14 years yesterday.
Shinichiro Wada, 30, of Waseda University, Tokyo, was convicted of two attacks but is suspected of carrying out hundreds of assaults over several years. Thirteen other students from leading universities have already been jailed.
Wada was the leader of the so-called Super Free Circle, which organised parties at Tokyo nightclubs often attended by thousands of students.
They were advertised as a good way for young women to meet eligible young men. But last year, after a 20-year-old woman told police she had been gang-raped, it emerged that Wada and others used the events to pick out women to be attacked.
Some reports have suggested that Wada raped up to 500 women. Super Free organisers even had a manual outlining how to carry out a successful rape, with tips on how to calm victims afterwards.
Police found photos of women being assaulted, which they believe were taken to blackmail the victims into silence. Most of the accused were from universities such as Waseda and Keio, regarded as the "Oxbridge" of Japan. Japan"s last three prime ministers graduated from one or other of them. In Japan"s education-obsessed society, students from elite universities are virtually guaranteed good careers.
The attacks shocked the country and there were suggestions that years of intense cramming under pressure had robbed the students of a sense of normality. Others said the prestige of reaching a top university had made them so arrogant they felt rules did not apply to them.
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