TOKYO: Japan's Supreme Court has upheld a ruling that ordered a former senior television reporter to pay journalist Shiori Ito 3.3 million yen (US$24,000) in damages over a high-profile rape case that helped spark Japan's #MeToo movement.
The top court said it agreed with a Tokyo High Court ruling last January, saying Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a 56-year-old former Washington bureau chief for Tokyo Broadcasting System Television Inc., had sexual intercourse with Ito without her consent in 2015.
According to a Kyodo News report, Ito, 33, had said she was raped at a hotel while unconscious after a dinner in Tokyo with Yamaguchi, who had promised to help her get a job. The defendant had claimed the act was consensual.
However, the Supreme Court also upheld another decision by the high court that was in favour of Yamaguchi, which ordered Ito to pay him 550,000 yen for defamation.
The high court had ruled that her claim in a book that he might have drugged her was not credible.
Ito had sought 11 million yen in damages over her rape, while Yamaguchi countersued, seeking 130 million yen in damages for harming his reputation.
During the trial, Yamaguchi had said he was "murdered socially" and "suffered irreparable hardship" caused by a "nonexistent" sexual assault, while Ito said she "suffered new pain" as Yamaguchi called her "a false accuser and sex crime victim."
In the latest decision, the Supreme Court agreed with the high court's acknowledgment that Ito and the former TV journalist did not have a close relationship and that she consulted doctors and police immediately after the incident.
After the incident, Ito had filed a criminal complaint with the police, but in 2016, prosecutors decided not to charge the accused due insufficient evidence.
The Kyodo News report said that Ito previously said she believed the defendant's close ties with assasinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, might have discouraged prosecutors from pursuing the case.
After unveiling her real name and publishing a book in 2017 about her experience of sexual assault, Ito became a symbol of Japan's #MeToo movement, where few victims come forward in the country.
In 2020, Ito was named as among the world's 100 Most Influential People of 2020 by Time magazine.
The United States weekly magazine had said Ito had forever changed life for Japanese women with her brave accusation of sexual violence against her harasser.
Time said she had pushed other women to promote the #MeToo movement in Japan and sparked the national flower demonstration, a protest movement against sexual violence, where women simply gather together standing with flowers, telling their stories of victimisation.