NAHA, Okinawa — The woman Dag Allen Thompson is accused of raping in August doesn’t want him just to spend the rest of his life in jail.
She also wants him castrated.
The 21-year-old woman testified for six hours Thursday in Naha District Court. When asked by prosecutor Mamoru Yamatoya how she felt about Thompson, the college student testified she’d like to “see him cut so he would not be able to have sexual relationships.”
When informed that’s not possible under Japanese law, she said a life sentence would do.
“He is still remaining silent about what he has done,” the woman said in court. “He is showing no remorse and he is sure to rape and hurt other women if he is ever released. I want him to be punished to make sure he cannot repeat it again. I want the court to put him to prison for the rest of his life.”
Thompson, 31, a former Marine and a salesman for Exchange New Car Sales, pleaded not guilty to charges of breaking into the woman’s Chatan home and raping her on Aug. 22. Evidence taken in that case led to a second charge of burglary and rape in a 1998 case in Naha.
The woman testified that during the attack, she reached for her cell phone and flipped it open to shed its light on the man. “He was light skinned with a double chin and his eyes looked like a dead fish - there was no expression,” she said, adding that after he raped her, the cell phone rang “and he got up and left the room.”
The woman said she then cut from her sheets fabric she believed he’d dampened. When she reported the crime, she took the fabric and other evidence to police, who tested the materials for DNA, according to court testimony.
Thompson sat silently between two guards while the woman testified via closed-circuit television from another room in the courthouse. The television screens were turned away from Thompson and the spectators as she testified in detail that she was attacked in her home early in the morning of Aug. 22. The woman said she remains traumatized.
“My suffering is still bothering me to this day,” she said, stating she has found it hard to eat and is afraid to be alone. She said she is seeing a psychiatrist and takes tranquilizers and sleeping pills.
In a related matter, Thompson’s American attorney, Michael Griffith, said he has demanded the Naha District Public Prosecutor’s Office lift its ban on visitors. Only Okinawa attorney Toshimitsu Takaesu has been allowed to speak to Thompson since his Oct. 15 arrest.
“I have visited clients in prisons in over 20 different countries including a number of cases in Okinawa and Japan, and this is the first time that a prosecutor has attempted to prohibit visitation by either me or family members,” Griffith wrote in a letter hand-delivered to the prosecutor’s office.
Motions on the visitation issue now are before the Fukuoka High Court’s Naha branch.
A prosecutor’s spokesman said Thursday of Griffith, “This office does not recognize the said individual as an attorney for the defendant Dag Thompson. Therefore, we have no obligation to answer” Griffith’s letter.
