As the outrage over the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl by a US Marine in Okinawa continues to swell, an incident comes to light that not only adds to the mistrust and anger felt toward the US military by many of the people who live near their bases in Japan, but also demonstrates the difficulty of gauging the scale of the problem.

The US military announced Thursday that four US Marines at Iwakuni Air Station are being charged by the US military with gang-raping and robbing a 20-year-old woman in Hiroshima last October and with disobeying orders. A hearing is being held to decide whether or not to try the four in courts martial.

While the woman reported the crime to police shortly after it took place, the police investigation was inconclusive due to inconsistencies in the woman’s story. While she now says she consented to sex with one of the four Marines, whose three friends then joined in and, along with the first, gang-raped and robbed her, she neglected to inform the police that the initial encounter had begun as a consensual one while the initial investigation was taking place. The police turned the investigation over to prosecutors, who declined to indict the four.

This case raises two important questions: First, how strongly was the military’s decision to charge the four Marines in this case was motivated by a desire to demonstrate, publicly, their tough stance on crime and insistence on discipline?
Second, how often does the military press charges when the local police don’t? How many crimes go unpunished and unresolved due to the difficulty of establishing a prosecutorial case in instances of rape?

Furthermore, what effect is this going to have on the opinions of feelings of people in Iwakuni, who only just elected a Mayor whose whole platform was revitalizing the area through regaining subsidies by agreeing to host a Naval air wing?

(HT to Japan Probe.)