JAPAN: Japan man guilty of serial rape, not death of Briton Lucie B;ackman

A former Japanese businessman has been found not guilty of rape resulting in death of Briton Lucie Blackman in 2000, but is sentenced to life in prison for series of other rapes One-time property developer Joji Obara was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday (April 24) by a Tokyo court for a series of rapes but cleared of the murder of Lucie Blackman, a 21-year-old former British Airways flight attendant who was working as a hostess when she disappeared in July 2000. Obara, 54, had been charged with 10 cases of rape, including drugging, raping and killing of Blackman. Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for Obara, the heaviest possible punishment for rape resulting in death. He has denied all the charges. Blackman's disappearance and death attracted massive international attention due to the Blackman family's campaign to find her and because of the gravity of the crime and the fact that such crimes involving Western women are rare in Japan. Memories of the case were revived in March this year when Briton Lindsay Ann Hawker, a 22-year-old English teacher from Brandon near Coventry, was found dead in a sand-filled bathtub in an apartment near Tokyo. Police are still searching for Hawker's suspected killer, a 28-year-old Japanese man who fled the apartment where her body was found when police arrived to question him. Blackman, from Kent in southeast England, was working at a hostess bar in Tokyo's Roppongi entertainment district, where men pay hundreds of dollars to drink and chat with the women. She vanished on July 1, 2000, after saying she was going for a drive with a man. Prosecutors said Obara took her to his beachfront condominium near Tokyo that day and knocked her unconscious with drug-laced drinks before raping her. Police found her remains -- including a severed head encased in concrete -- seven months later in a cave by the sea 250 metres from Obara's condominium. Obara has told the court that he had drinks and watched videos with Blackman in his room that night, but that she was fine when he left her the next day. Obara was also charged with drugging, raping and causing the death of Carita Ridgway, a 21-year-old Australian hostess who died in a hospital of hepatitis in 1992. Last September, Blackman's father, Tim Blackman, accepted a 100 million yen ($840,000) "condolence payment" paid by a friend of Obara, saying he would donate a substantial amount of it to a charity set up in his daughter's name. But his his ex-wife, Lucie's mother, criticised him, saying the action could affect the sentencing. Foreign hostesses from many countries work in Tokyo, but many work illegally on tourist visas, making it difficult for them to report trouble to police.

ITN Source | April 24, 2007

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