The Tokyo District Court on Monday sentenced a former employee of a Recruit Holdings group company to 25 years in prison for raping 10 women including a job-hunting college student.
Presiding Judge Masaru Nomura condemned Kenshiro Maruta, 33, for assaulting those women and filming the scenes of the assaults, saying he committed an "outrageous act of using the victims for his own sexual desire and ignoring their dignity."
Prosecutors had demanded 28 years in prison.
Citing about 3½ years of repeated assaults, the judge said: "Maruta's sense of morality was blunted. His crime was significantly habitual. He bears an extremely heavy criminal responsibility."
According to the ruling, Maruta sexually assaulted 10 women between April 2017 and October 2020 at hotels or at home, making them unable to resist by giving them drinks containing sleeping pills. Those women included a college student who asked Maruta for advice on job hunting.