Australian Catherine Jane Fisher was raped by a US Navy sailor in Yokosuka in 2002. She is the author of the book “I am Catherine Jane,” which reveals the story behind her 12-year fight with the US military and Japanese authorities.
Speaking to Sputnik in an interview Fischer recalls how she was treated as a criminal by the Japanese government after she was raped.
“When a victim is raped, they obviously go for help. You try to find a hero or someone who can help you, you go to the police. That was my first mistake; I should have returned to my family and sowed help by myself, probably from the Australian embassy, instead I went to the Japanese police and I was treated like a criminal,” Fisher said.
“I was taken to the hospital the following morning and realized that back in 2002 there were no rape test kits in Japan and the Japanese police, after they finished doing their barbaric treatment towards me, sent me off home without even any underwear on,” Fischer said.
She said that the major problem with the sexual violence incidents in Japan was the lack of education and training by the police force, there were neither centers nor any test kits back in 2002. Since then, Fisher has been lobbying for that, for the last fourteen years.
She said that if the Japanese government had acted upon her requests to set up centers for rape victims, the young lady who was recently raped in Okinawa may have been alive today.
Fischer further spoke about her struggles after rape and how she tried to seek justice by taking her rapist to court. However, as soon as she managed to take him to court, the rapist had fled the country. She asked the Japanese government for their support but it refused saying that there is nothing it could do.
“So I had to look for the rapist by myself for ten years. When I did finally located him he was in prison for another crime,” Fisher said.
She said that she went back to the Japanese government and said that she found the person and asked them to kindly send her court hearing to the United States, but the Japanese government blatantly refused to do so saying that under the agreement with the US, the military personnel should respect the Japanese laws but are not obliged to follow them.
In the most recent accident, a US Navy servicewoman Aimee Mejia injured two local civilians while driving drunk down the wrong lane of the road. Her blood alcohol level was found to exceed the allowed limit by six-fold.
Earlier in May, 32-year-old former US Marine Kenneth Franklin Shinzato was arrested on suspicion of stabbing and strangling a 20-year-old Japanese woman, identified as Rina Shimabukuro, near the base.
As of today the Japanese island hosts 26 thousand US troops. US military personnel have reportedly committed almost six thousand crimes in Japan since 1972. However, even the registered cases have not been always investigated properly.
The US command planned to relocate the Okinawa base from a densely populated area of the island to a more deserted one, but had to abolish the plan because of strong local resistance.
