A Japanese court on Tuesday sentenced a former teacher to two years in prison for taking indecent images of pupils and sharing them on social media, making him the first among members of an alleged teachers’ voyeurism ring to receive a prison sentence in a high-profile case that came to light last year.
The Nagoya District Court handed down the sentence to Katsuya Ishikawa, 28, who was a teacher at a junior high school in Hayama, Kanagawa Prefecture, at the time of his arrest in September.
Judge Kyoko Irie said the defendant had also shared photos of the victims’ faces within the group and “exposed them to the risk of the images being widely circulated and causing further harm”.
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According to the ruling, between July and December 2024, Ishikawa secretly took photos and videos of three female students at a junior school in Kanagawa, where he was working at the time, capturing images on his smartphone that included their underwear, and shared them via a social media group chat.
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Video of girl being shoved in Japan sparks online outrage
Video of girl being shoved in Japan sparks online outrage
In August last year, he also shot upskirt images of a then 14-year-old girl on an escalator of a station in Kamakura, also in Kanagawa Prefecture.
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