A 44-year-old taxi driver has been arrested on suspicion of quasi-rape — non-consensual sex with a person unable to resist — after he allegedly followed a drunk female passenger into her home and assaulted her, the Metropolitan Police Department's Nogata station said. Tomo Masatoshi denies the charge, saying sex took place but was not forced.
The woman, in her 20s, took the taxi home after a drinking party on the night of October 6 and fell asleep in the vehicle. She told police she remembered nothing from the ride until she woke the following morning, when she felt something unusual about her body but did not realize she had been assaulted.
On the night of October 8 she found a note in her home's postbox reading, "If you want to meet again, call this number," along with emergency contraceptive pills. The note carried Tomo's mobile phone number. She went to a hospital the next day and contacted police.
Security camera footage
Footage from the building's security camera showed Tomo entering the entrance hall with the unsteady woman, according to a reporter with a national newspaper's social affairs desk. He is believed to have stayed in her room for about 20 minutes.
Tomo was arrested on October 22. On the morning of October 24 he appeared at the station's transfer exit with his chin raised and a sullen expression, and looked up at the sky just before being driven to prosecutors.
Earlier taxi assaults
Taxi drivers have been arrested over sexual assaults on passengers before. Satoshi Tanaka, 55, was arrested in May last year and is still on trial. He gave a heavily intoxicated passenger a drink laced with sleeping pills until she was barely conscious, assaulted her in his car and elsewhere, and filmed it on his phone.
About 3,000 indecent images of roughly 50 women were found on a USB drive seized from Tanaka's home. He told the court he had no memory of assaulting passengers but would admit the acts if footage existed. Prosecutors say he switched off his dashcam during the periods when the assaults are believed to have occurred.
No habitual pattern has emerged in Tomo's case so far. He lives in a two-story apartment in a quiet residential area about 10 minutes on foot from the nearest station, with bamboo groves nearby.
Neighbors said they had not seen him cause trouble. One described a car parked on a nearby road early in the morning with a man sitting inside, and said it may have been police.