Judo double Olympic medalist arrested for rape of teenager
It sometimes seems that the kids who are good at sport get all the girls, right? Well, yes and no.
Masato Uchishiba (33) may have won two Olympic gold medals for Judo but it seems he is not champion of judgement when it comes to controlling primal urges.
He has been arrested for “sexual assault” of a teenaged girl at a Tokyo hotel (=love hotel?) while she was drunk (i.e. he got her drunk) in September. Apparently the girl is a fellow judo team member at the university where Uchishiba worked as coach.
Uchishiba claims the sex was by mutual consent, and we might have another case here that reignites the age-old debate of whether being inebriated beyond protest can constitute as rape. However, the fact that the girl is under 20 (below drinking age in Japan), and supposedly under Uchishiba’s care in his judo team, are not factors likely to show him in a good light. Uchishiba also has a wife and young son.
Japanese media is calling this scandal “unprecedented”. He’s already lost his job in November and now comes news that he has been stripped of two honors awarded to him by the local government in Kyushu.
