A Flower Demonstration against sexual violence is held near Kokura Station in Kita-Kyushu on Dec. 11. (Mayuri Ito)
The Tokyo High Court on Dec. 21 handed a seven-year prison term to a father who raped his biological daughter from the age of 12, overturning a lower court ruling that viewed her testimony as untrustworthy.
It acknowledged that the girl s testimony was “substantially specific and realistic in a way that only a person who was victimized can give.”
The Shizuoka District Court acquitted the defendant of the rape charges in March 2019, concluding the girl’s testimony was unreliable. The father was indicted on charges of raping his daughter in 2017.