A woman who was sexually assaulted while serving in the Ground Self-Defense Force said Wednesday that her fight to get justice was "not a waste," a day after a court convicted three former members for sexual indecency.
"I spent two years of my life fighting against it," Rina Gonoi, 24, said at a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo. Though she said it would have been better if she had not gone through the painful experience in the first place, her remarks suggested she feels it was worth the effort.
The high-profile case brought the culture of harassment in Japan's armed forces to public attention after Gonoi made the rare move of coming forward to report the offenses.