Wakayama Prefectural Police on Wednesday announced the arrest of a 26-year-old man for groping a woman he thought had given him consent via a Web site, reports the Sankei Shimbun (May 9).
On April 30, Masaya Ogawa, a former nurse from Osaka, is alleged to have fondled the buttocks and breast of a 23-year-old woman inside the carriage of the JR Wakayama Line.
According to police, Ogawa believed the woman in question had posted a message on an Internet bulletin board that recruits men interested in molesting females inside commuter trains.
At around 7 a.m., the suspect boarded a train at Kokawa Station. After seeing a woman attired as described in the message board and seated in the agreed upon seat, he sat down beside her and proceeded to grab her breasts and buttocks. Simultaneously, another man standing at the exit reached around her and touched her chest. The victim reportedly did not resist the actions of either man.
After an unspecified period of time, the woman requested that the groping cease, at which point the man standing near the door exited the train. Ogawa, however, continued his actions for another 20 or 30 minutes. At Wakayama Station, the train’s final stop, she seized his arm and handed him over to station personnel.
Ogawa has reportedly admitted to the allegations. “I wanted to encounter a woman seeking to be molested by a pervert inside a train car,” the suspect is quoted by police.
According to investigators, the victim denies having posted a message on a train-molestation site. She said she uses the same seat in her commute to work, and investigators are treating the case as a matter of identity fraud. They also believe the man who exited the train also visited the same bulletin board site.
