STALKING
KEYWORDS: CRIMINAL LAW, STALKING

Many complaints still abound about deficiencies in Japanese anti-stalking laws. Particularly the police seem still to be reluctant to follow-up on complaints by female victims who were in theory the primary beneficiaries of the laws. The Kobe District Court ordered the Kobe Prefectural Police to pay 66 million yen for failing to protect a woman who had been stalked by an ex-lover for years. Despite repeated complaints the police were not even recording them. The man even broke into her home and the police still did nothing. One woman who complained to the local police over a man who had been stalking her for over two years, was met with the policeman’s reaction that he did not want to potentially smear the man’s reputation. Another man was given a life sentence for stalking and killing a 17 year old girl. He had been stalking her for about 40 days and the making about ten calls a day to her on the phone. Another 48 year old man was arrested on the stalking law after he made about 6000 calls to a former girl friend in a period of about one year. On the other hand, the police did arrest a woman who was stalking another woman in violation of the Stalking Prevention Law. Amazingly, the woman did it again after she was arrested the first time. In another case which resulted in the death of two people, a family had complained to the police about another man who had stalked them, threw stones at their house and even broke into their house saying he would kill them all. They were informed by the police that the national stalking law only applied to people who did these acts due to romantic or sexual interests. On the other hand, an anti-stalking ordinance by the Tokyo Municipal Government resulted in a suspended 18 month sentence for a man who had followed his landlord around and bad mouthed him. This Tokyo Municipal Government ordinance was specifically passed due to the above-mentioned weaknesses in the national law, requiring a romantic or sexual interest. The ordinance provides for a 500,000 fine but habitual offenders can be fined one million yen or imprisoned for one year.

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved Attorney Roderick H. Seeman

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