Victim speaks of fear, trauma in latest Okinawa rape case

by SATSUKI TANAHASHI
August 24, 2024

Demonstrators rally over alleged sex crimes involving U.S. service members outside the U.S. Kadena Air Base in Okinawa Prefecture on June 28. Jin Hirakawa photo

NAHA--An underage girl testifying about her alleged abduction and rape by a U.S. airman in Okinawa Prefecture gave a haunting account of the fear she felt.

Her testimony at the Naha District Court on Aug. 23 came during the second hearing of the case centered around non-consensual sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 16.

Recalling that the defendant, Brennon R.E. Washington, a 25-year-old airman stationed at the U.S. Kadena Air Base in Okinawa Prefecture, bundled her into his car, she said, “I was scared that if I refused, he would do something to me.”

The girl took the stand surrounded by screens so she could not be seen by the defendant or others in the courtroom.

The girl said a foreign man approached and touched her near her home in July 2023, five months before the incident.

When asked by prosecutors if she thought the man and the defendant were one and the same, she replied, “Yes.”

She said the incident vexed her mentally and physically.

“After the incident, I could not sleep at night. I became afraid to go outside.”

The girl said she began taking sleeping pills and started self-harming on her arms and legs.

She also said she wants the defendant to “understand the seriousness of the crime he committed.”

During the incident, she said she told the defendant her actual age “in English as well” through hand gestures.

At the first hearing of the case held in July, defense lawyers claimed their client had checked her age and understood that she was 18.