Kentaro Kitagawa, former head of the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office, will plead not guilty of raping a female prosecutor while in office in September 2018, his lawyer said Tuesday.
During his first trial hearing in October, Kitagawa, 65, said he would not contest the allegation, expressing deep remorse over having caused serious harm on the victim.
The about-face came after the woman filed criminal complaints against another team member of Kitagawa’s over the leak of investigative information to his side before arrest, which resulted in the entire prosecutors office coming under public scrutiny, the defense lawyer told a news conference.
The former chief Osaka prosecutor will deny criminal intent in future hearings because he believed there was consent, the lawyer said, adding that Kitagawa initially rejected the lawyer’s advice that he plead not guilty in order to avoid causing trouble.
According to the indictment, Kitagawa sexually assaulted the drunk subordinate at his then-official residence in the city of Osaka between the night of Sept. 12, 2018, and the early hours of the following day.
The woman quit in 2019 for personal reasons and later reported the incident to senior prosecutors, leading to Kitagawa’s arrest in June.
“How long do I have to be humiliated and tortured until he is satisfied?” she said in a statement through her lawyer Tuesday. “I demand a long prison term commensurate with the serious crime committed by the head of prosecution as well as with his unrepentant and insensitive words and deeds that hurt the victim.”
