JAPAN
Mainichi
All the prayers in the world were not going to help the religious pastor who called himself Paolo Nagata when the Kyoto District Court handed down its verdict against him, according to Shukan Gendai (3/11).
"These crimes stand alone in the annals of sex crime for their extreme maliciousness," Presiding Judge Takeshi Uegaki said as he convicted Nagata of seven counts of rape and ordered him to serve 20 years in jail.
Nagata, better known by his real name of Tamotsu Kin, was found guilty of repeatedly violating girls at various times starting from around March 2001 until his arrest last year.
"He used his position as leader of his church to tell the girls they would go to Hell if they did not do as he told them, then forced himself upon them. All the seven girls he raped were virgins and at least one of them was still in elementary school," a reporter for a national newspaper tells Shukan Gendai. "He did not say a word of apology to the victims throughout his trial, so it was only natural that he was sent away for as long as prosecutors wanted him behind bars."