Around the nondescript Tokyo suburb where she lives with her three children, Jane is a well-known face. Foreign in an area crowded with Japanese, she has taught English for years here among neighbors who greet her warmly on the street. Few know that her life is consumed by a fight against one of the world's most powerful military alliances, and a secret agreement that she says allows its crimes to go unpunished.
In a room cluttered with the detritus of her seven-year struggle she tells her story, which begins with a violent sexual assault. On April 6, 2002, Jane was raped by American sailor Bloke T. Deans in a car park near the U.S. Yokosuka Naval Base southwest of Tokyo. Shocked and bleeding, she ended up in the small hours inside the local police station, where what she calls her second violation began.
During a 12-hour interview with a team of male cops that stretched into the middle of the next day, she was "mocked," refused food, medical aid and water, and treated like a criminal. Her demands for a container for her urine, which she believed contained the sperm of her attacker, were ignored until, crying with rage and frustration, she says she flushed the evidence of her rape down the station toilet. Then she was taken back to the car park, where she was forced to re-enact the assault for police cameras.