(Disclaimer: This article contains very sensitive and gruesome information, not suitable for all readers)
“Let me die” “Why am I still breathing?” “Can I die please”
– LAST WORDS OF JUNKO FURUTA
Every country has some events or crimes that are hideous and horrifying. Rape, which is a worldwide issue, is not specific to any one nation, gender, sexual orientation, or age. It continues to happen frequently, and yet many are not reported to the police, among all such cases there is a story of Junko Furuta- a girl who was raped 500 times by over 100 men and died until she finally gave up.
Also read: Rape should be declared as a national emergency in India too
In November 1998 in Saitama, Japan, a 16-year-old Japanese girl, Junko Furuta was abducted, tortured, brutally raped for 44 days. It is believed she was raped by at least 12 men in a day. Today, she is known as a “Concrete-encased high school girl.”
So who was Junko Furuta?
Junko Furuta was a well-liked active high school teenager, doing a part-time job. She was everyone’s favourite. Hiroshi Miyano- a member of Yakuza, a group of Japanese gangsters, liked her and sent a proposal to her, but she turned down his proposal, which didn’t go very well.
When she was biking home from her part-time job. Hiroshi Miyano and his friend Nobuharu Minato were lurking in the area with the intent of accosting and raping local women. They spotted Furuta on her bike and Minato kicked her before fleeing the scene. Posing as an innocent bystander, Miyano offered to walk her home.
Miyano had connections with the Yakuza and threatened to tell them to kill Furuta’s family if she tried to escape. So instead, he took her to a warehouse and raped her. Then, he brought her to a hotel where he raped her again and called Minato and two other friends, Jō Ogura and Yasushi Watanabe. They agreed to take turns and rape her as a lesson for rejecting Hiroshi’s proposal.
On November 25, 1988, the group took her to Minato’s home in Ayase in Adachi Ward, Tokyo, and gang-raped her. Two days later, her parents called the police. When her captors found out, they forced her into calling her parents and telling them she’d run away to a friend’s house but insisted that she is not in danger and to stop the police investigation.
The torture she went through afterwards is beyond anyone’s living nightmare. The four invited others to rape her, starved her, hung her from the roof and used her as a punching bag, put objects like lightbulbs and even lit fireworks, into her private parts, causing burns and ugly bleedings.
For Junko worst was yet to come
They dropped dumbbells onto her stomach, forced her to eat cockroaches and drink her own urine. They also forced her to masturbate to please them. Her legs were burned several times causing burns that were noxious. The foul smell angered her captors and tortured her by burning her eyelids and her private parts with hot wax while sticking needles in her breast and ripping her left nipple with pliers.
Also read: Deep Rooted Patriarchy is one of the factors of recurring rapes
Furuta managed to call the police while her captors were asleep, but was caught and punished by lighting up her feet and forcing large bottles inside her anus. Somehow, she managed to survive and, despite the severe injuries in her uterus and anus, she was found pregnant. She was forced to sleep outside on a cold winter night, with her bones fractured.
When her captors challenged her for a game, she not only managed to play but won, which raged Miyano and his friends, beating her with an iron barbell and setting her on fire. When they found out she was dead, they wrapped her and concreted her inside an oil drum. When all four perpetrators were arrested, the police found out bottles stuck up in her anus, while her face was completely unrecognizable.
However, as they were all minors when the crime was committed, they were sentenced as juveniles. Three of them were imprisoned for less than 8 years, while Miyao was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Even after this heinous crime, they faced lenient penalties. Now, they are all in their late 40’s and living their normal lives without any remorse. But do you think justice was served? Do you think she will ever get justice?
