Offended defense professor gets defensive over professed offensive offence

Matake Kamiya, a professor at the National Defense Academy in Japan, is defense expert, but now it looks like he's going to need some expert defense of his own as he faces a trial accused of a woman with a proven record of tracking down train gropers, according to Shukan Shincho (3/24).

Kamiya gained his 15 minutes of fame following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when he offered comments on counter-terrorism to scores of media outlets and was, for a while, a familiar face on TV screens.

His latest onslaught on the media, however, is more likely to bring with it infamy with his trial for molestation of a woman on a Tokyu Denen Toshi Line train on Oct. 8 last year.

Kamiya's accuser has taken the stands to testify against the man she says rubbed her buttocks. Separated from the court gallery by a partition aimed at protecting her identity, the woman damned the famed academic.

"At first, I felt what I thought was either a finger or the aerial from a mobile phone poking into the small of my back," Shukan Shincho quotes her telling the Tokyo District Court. "After a while, I felt what was clearly the palm of a hand pressed against the cheeks of my buttocks. I could feel it moving around."

The woman didn't panic. Like many Japanese women who ride the capital's jam-packed commuter trains, she'd been through the process of being groped. She'd even managed to snare a couple of her molesters. She knew what to do.

"First, I checked out his reflection in the carriage window to make sure I knew what he looked like. Then, I straightened my back and moved my butt away from his hands," Shukan Shincho quotes her saying.

The hand not only moved back into place moments later, this time it began squeezing and massaging the butt cheek. The woman knew she needed to catch the perpetrator in the act if she wanted to be able to present conclusive evidence he was a groper. But she was carrying things in both hands.

"I switched the stuff I was carrying in my left hand and freed my right hand, which I used to grab the groper's wrist as I quickly swung around," the weekly quotes her saying.

Greeting the woman face-to-face was minor celebrity Kamiya.

"He said, 'it's a mistake, 'you're misunderstanding,'" Shukan Shincho quotes the woman as saying. "Finally, though, he turned to me and said, 'I'm sorry.'"

Kamiya changed tack the moment he got out of the train, though. As the woman dragged him to the cops, he started denied her story. He has since remained vehement that he didn't act as the woman is accusing him.

www.mainichinews.com

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