Tag: rape

Korean Man Arrested for Multiple Rapes in California

People should be careful who they meet up with through Kakao:

A Korean man in his 20s got arrested for having multiple sexual activities with underage girls that he met through the social network.

Anaheim police department arrested a Korean man Mr. Kim last 29th of March for having sexual relationships and raping teen girls.

According to the Anaheim police, Kim contacted a 13-year-old girl through messaging app on the phone in 2014.

Kim then met the teen girl at a shopping mall in Irvine and took her to his house in La Habra and raped her.

The Anaheim police officers started sting operation and engaged in social network with Mr. Kim, disguised as the girl. Kim, thinking the officers were teenage girl, sent photos of his private body parts and offered her to have sexual activities.

Kim went out to the park in Anaheim not realizing the girl was actually the police officer and was arrested.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Korean Court Denies Man’s Appeal of Five Year Incestuous Rape Sentence

At least the Korean courts have decided to keep this dirt bag in jail.  I can remember the days when the Korean courts were so weak on sexual assault that they were letting rapists routinely go free:

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The Seoul High Court turned down a sexually abusive stepfather’s appeal for a lighter sentence Sunday.

The convicted, 48, was charged for abusing his sleeping stepdaughter, 25, and later threatening her with physical violence in an attempt to prevent her from alerting authorities.

In the original trial he received five years in prison for incestuous sexual assault, but later appealed, saying his sentence was too heavy.

The appeals court turned down his plea in a decision saying, “The nature of the defendant’s crime is malignant as he had not only sexually assaulted his own stepdaughter, but also threatened her with a weapon to cover up his crime.”  [Korea Herald]

US Sailor Accused of Raping Okinawa Woman

Here we go again, hopefully the hotel has security cameras that caught exactly what happened in the hotel lobby:

(CNN)A U.S. serviceman has been arrested in the southern Japanese prefecture of Okinawa on suspicion of raping a Japanese tourist, local police have confirmed to CNN. The alleged attack took place in the serviceman’s hotel room in Naha, the prefectural capital.

The man, identified by Okinawan police as 24-year old Navy sailor Justin Castellanos, stationed at Camp Schwab in Okinawa, allegedly took the victim, a 40-year-old woman from the Japanese prefecture of Kyushu, to his room after finding her asleep, drunk, in the hotel’s lobby before raping her. [CNN]

You can read the rest at the link but it does bother me how the media names the accused sailor in the article before he even goes to trial. 

Lee Jung-hee Scandal Shows Why People Should Be Skeptical of Internet Campaigns

When the Lee Jung-hee Scandal broke I thought it seemed strange and sure enough it was all as expected a hoax.  This just shows how these campaigns passed around on social media I have little faith in because they are mostly not true and this scandal is just another example:

As we know now, this was all a hoax. The monstrous former husband, who was supposedly blocking the police investigation because he was so well-connected with powerful people, was no more than an old pizza delivery man living in a crappy studio apartment. Lee led to the journalists to a rural village, claiming that her perpetrators lived there–not just one or two of the perpetrators, but according to Lee, the whole village was a sex colony that raped her and her sons. (But why would these allegedly rich and powerful men who assaulted her and her sons live in a crappy rural village?) The police did investigate the former husband when Lee initially claimed sexual assault to the police. After four months of investigation, the police did not find any nefarious orgy picture or video, nor did they find any sign of drug use from the former husband.

The real story was simpler and made much more sense. Lee and the former husband were indeed married, and were in the process of divorce. The former husband did beat Lee and the children, which resulted in a favorable divorce for Lee. It was when the husband appealed the decision by the divorce court that Lee began claiming sexual assault. Her story fell apart as soon as the more serious Korean media began their investigation. Earlier this month, Lee was arrested on the charges of malicious litigation and child abuse; Lee’s children were separated from their mother and were placed in protective services.  [Ask A Korean]

You can read more of Ask A Korean’s take on this issue at the link which I agree with.

47 Year Old Korean Man Found Not Guilty of Raping Teenager Because He Said He Loved Victim

For anyone that wants to commit statutory rape in Korea, just say that you loved the victim and the Supreme Court will find you not guilty of the crime:

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The Supreme Court will review the case of a man, 46, who was found not guilty of raping a teenage girl, Yonhap has reported. Prosecutors appealed the Seoul High Court’s “not-guilty” ruling on Thursday.

But the nation’s highest court is unlikely to change its stance on the case, which it has reviewed before, legal sources said.

The man, identified only as “A” and owner of an entertainment company, was indicted for allegedly raping a middle school student 27 years his junior.

According to evidence given at lower court trials, the man had sexual relations with the woman, identified as “B,” many times and got her pregnant in 2011. “B” was 15 at the time.

“A” was indicted after “B” reported to police that she was raped.

“A” was found guilty at the first and second trials.

But last November the Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision, as “A” kept insisting he had loved “B.” It sent the case back to the lower court, which ruled on Oct. 16 that he is not guilty of rape.  [Korea Times via the Marmot’s Hole]

Airman Acquitted In Politically Motivated Sexual Assault Case

So basically when it was all said and done Lieutenant General Franklin who was forced to retire because of this was actually right:

An Air Force sexual assault case that spanned two investigations, a lieutenant general’s forced retirement and a finding of unlawful command influence ended after more than three years Wednesday with the acquittal of Airman 1st Class Brandon T. Wright.

A military jury made up of officers and enlisted personnel — six men and one woman — found Wright not guilty at Joint Base Andrews, Md., after three hours of deliberation.

The accuser’s former Special Victims’ Counsel said the verdict, although disappointing, was not a complete loss.

“I’m disappointed that the panel did not convict him; however, I am happy that the Air Force finally took the case seriously, as it should have from the start, and my former client received the day in court that she deserved,” Maribel Jarzabek said. “I think the fact that the jury deliberated for three hours and asked to see some of the evidence showed that this wasn’t the slam-dunk case that Gen. (Craig) Franklin and others predicted it would be.”

Wright was accused of raping a staff sergeant in her apartment near Aviano Air Base, Italy, after a night of drinking and socializing in 2012.

Wright’s defense, which focused its closing argument on the prosecution’s burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and what the defense lawyers characterized as inconsistencies in the woman’s statements over the past three-plus years, hailed the verdict.

Maj. Jacob Ramer and Cpt. Patrick Hughes said in a statement that “panel member(s) understood the importance of their role and gave their full attention to resolving the question before them.”

They also said that Wright’s unit had been “monumental in… helping him through the most difficult time of his young life.”

Wright did not testify.

After an Article 32 preliminary hearing in the case, then-Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, concurring with the hearing officer’s and legal adviser’s advice, dismissed the case in 2013.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link, but you have to like the spin the prosecution is coming up with.  What is the purpose then of an Article 32 if someone who accuses someone of a crime deserve to have their day in court like the prosecution claims?  Lt. Gen. Franklin has now been vindicated that this case did not have enough evidence to get a conviction.  Also if anything deliberating only three hours shows how weak of a case this was. Even more troubling about this case is that it was so weak despite having the entire Air Force legal community trying to get a conviction to include using unlawful command influence:

An Air Force judge has ruled that the service’s top legal officer committed unlawful command influence in a sexual assault case, partly for political motives. Nonetheless, the case will proceed to court-martial.

Lt. Col. Joshua Kastenberg, in a July 30 ruling in response to a defense motion to dismiss the case against Airman 1st Class Brandon T. Wright, found that Lt. Gen. Richard Harding, formerly the Air Force Judge Advocate General, had improperly influenced the case or had given the appearance of doing so.

One such instance, the judge ruled, was recommending that Wright’s case be transferred to another court-martial convening authority for a do-over after the first convening authority, Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin, dismissed the case in the summer of 2013. Franklin’s dismissal came after an Article 32 investigative hearing at Aviano Air Base, Italy.

Such transfers are almost unheard of. It happened in the Wright case, Kastenberg’s ruling says, in part because Harding was worried that “the failure to have charges preferred against SrA Wright would enable Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to gain needed votes on a pending bill to remove commanders from the court-martial process.”

The ruling took Harding to task for supposedly telling Col. Joseph Bialke, Franklin’s legal adviser, that sexual assault cases, absent “smoking gun” evidence about an alleged victim’s credibility, should be sent to court-martial. In so doing, Kastenberg wrote, Harding improperly attempted to shape Bialke’s future legal advice. Katsenberg ruled that the forced retirements of Bialke and Franklin after their handling of the Wright case created an appearance of unlawful command influence.  [Stars & Stripes]

All this case has likely done is force other convening authorities to send flimsy sexual assault cases to trial to protect their careers after seeing what happened to Lt. Gen. Franklin.

Is Male on Male Military Rape More Prevalent Than Believed?

This report from the American Psychological Association I take with a bit of skepticism just like I do all the other so called surveys done on military sexual assault.  Just like prior surveys this one also uses the vague term “Unwanted Sexual Contact”.  I have had women grab my butt in the bar before so does that make me a victim of sexual assault that was unreported?  There is a big different between rape and someone grabbing your butt in the bar, but these surveys tend to equate the two which inflates the number.  This survey is no different:

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A study has found that up to 15 times more men in the military are being raped by other man than is being reported by the Pentagon.

The report, released by the American Psychological Association on Tuesday, is based on the responses of 180 anonymous combat veterans.

It says the under-reporting is largely due to the stigma associated with sexual assaults and is the reason that the true extent of male-on-male sexual crimes is so vastly underestimated.

The Washington Times reported that most recent Pentagon sexual assault report, conducted by The Rand Corp last year, found that around 12,000 men said they had been sexually assaulted.

The definition of sexual assault means they had been raped, experienced unwanted sexual contact or someone had attempted to commit those crimes.

Of that number, around a third – 3,850 reported rape or ‘penetrative’ assaults.

But the APA said: ‘Rates of military sexual trauma among men who served in the military may be as much as 15 times higher than has been previously reported, largely because of barriers associated with stigma, beliefs in myths about male rape and feelings of helplessness.’   [The Daily Mail via reader tip]

You can read the rest at the link.

 

Korean Woman To Stand Trial for Raping Husband

I am sure there is probably some crazy back story to this case:

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A 40-year-old woman has been indicted on charges of forcing her husband to have sex with her, prosecutors said Tuesday.

It marks the first time that a wife has been charged with marital rape. The Supreme Court recognized spousal rape as a crime in May 2013.

The Seoul Central Prosecutors’ Office investigating the case alleges that the wife, only identified by her surname Shim, locked her husband, surnamed Kim, inside their house for 29 hours and forced him to have sex with her.

Shim allegedly committed the crime with the aim of obtaining favorable evidence to use for divorce procedures, the prosecutors said. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but no word if Songtan Sally was the perpetrator involved with this case.

SBS Report Tries to Uncover Truth of Rape and Sex Slave Claims

Korea Bang has the translation of an SBS report that researches whether a mother and her two sons were raped and kept as sex slaves.  It is a very odd story that features domestic violence, a religious cult, claims of drugged fueled orgies, rape, and even a mysterious shaman:

On October 29th, 2014, a woman in her 40s and her two sons held a press conference. The title was “Press conference to demand thorough investigation of Mr. Heo and his father’s sexual crimes”. She mainly claimed that her husband, Pastor Heo, her father-in-law and her own parents’ family members all worked together to rape her and her sons. She even claimed that they had had orgies.

Lee: “Would you believe my sons and I had sex with my husband and father-in-law? But it really happened. Sometimes, my father-in-law brought a dozen of his believers. On such a day, we would have an orgy.” (The older son and younger son will be called by false names Junho and Junsu hereafter.)  [Korea Bang]

Read the whole thing at the link.

Woman in the Philippines Claims 8 Korean Men Raped Her; Are Her Claims True?

Could you imagine what the reaction would be if these were American servicemembers accused of this even if the story didn’t add up like this one apparently isn’t according to the report:

Eight Korean men are embroiled in a rape scandal in the Philippines, which has prompted other Korean expats there to fear for their safety.

Broadcaster GMA reported Monday that the eight Korean men are suspected of raping a Filipino woman in her 20s after plying her with alcohol and taking her to a hotel.

The Filipino broadcaster said the woman met one of the men in online chat and agreed to meet him for drinks. The woman says the two then went to another bar, where seven other Korean men sexually molested her and took her to a hotel where they raped her. She says the men physically assaulted her when she tried to resist and she had to go to hospital.

Police have not yet been able to find definitive evidence to corroborate the victims’ claims of rape.

The report created a public uproar in the Philippines and went viral on the Internet. But a Korean Embassy inspector says the woman’s claims do not add up.

The inspector told the Chosun Ilbo, “A close inspection of surveillance camera footage showed no trace of the seven other men who the woman claimed took part in the rape.”

Police in the Philippines are investigating the prime suspect. An embassy official said, “We are concerned that the report by a major broadcaster could harm Korea’s image and lead to revenge attacks on Koreans. We plan to seek a review of the police investigation and launch an official response.”  [Chosun Ilbo]

Hopefully the truth will eventually come out, but this is another example of why people should wait and see facts come out before drawing conclusions on crimes like this.  However, she did go to the hospital which should be able to provide a wealth of physical and forensic evidence to help determine if she was gang raped even if the video evidence does not support it.  So it will be interesting to see what comes of this case.