Japanese Lady To Pay Fine To Wife Of Her Alleged Molester

A Japanese court has ordered a woman to pay compensation to the wife of the man she accused of sexual assault because their relationship violated the country’s civil law.

Meiko Sano filed a sexual assault complaint against her professor after ending a decade-long relationship with him.

Sano claimed in the case that Michio Hayashi, an art history professor in Sophia University’s Department of Liberal Arts, took advantage of his position over her to establish a relationship to which she never consented.

Sano was 23 when the relationship began, and Hayashi was 48, and she accused him of grooming her for sex. Their relationship began as purely intellectual, but it quickly shifted when he invited her to more intimate encounters, which Sano said she couldn’t reject.

Sano even accompanied Hayashi to a symposium, where she performed a sexual act she said was forced but he claimed was consensual. They continued to meet for sex in hotels for the next ten years, along with vacations to France, Italy, and Spain, before Sano ended the relationship and filed her case.

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Sano stated in court filings that she considered ending things several times, but she felt obligated and grateful to Hayashi, and she worried that refusing him would be impolite.

Sano said, “I understand that I was way too naïve, and I still hate myself for it. There were so many times when I could have just said, ‘No,’ and run away.”

In a twist to the story, Hayashi’s wife sued Sano for the relationship since marital adultery is considered a breach of the marriage contract under Japanese law. According to The New York Times, the wife was awarded about $20,000 in damages.

Sano lost her case, but she did receive some minor damages to help cover her own penalty to Hayashi’s wife. In later interviews, she stated that she was aware that her lawsuit had little chance of success in Japan, but she wanted to highlight the widespread psychological abuse in Japanese society.

Sano herself confessed that she did not consider herself a sexually assaulted victim because she had no bruises or injuries from the encounters. In court records, Hayashi’s wife stated that she despised her husband for his infidelity, but she refused to think he had done any sexual harassment.

Hayashi’s wife accused Sano of “pushing all the responsibility of their relationship onto my husband as if she is wholeheartedly the victim.” When she found out about the connection, she told Sano that if it wasn’t consensual, she should have filed a complaint with the university right away.

Hayashi confessed blame, but only for his infidelity, not for any alleged sexual harassment. “To be addressed as ‘dearest,’ in a message from a student to a professor, there is a familiarity there that is not quite normal,” he argued.

In Hayashi’s instance, the university found that his behaviour and relationships merited dismissal.