Church Member Freed from Kidnappers in Osaka

Douglas Burton
November 6, 2009

Ms. Hiromi Kawamoto, 29, a youth leader of the Unification Church in North Osaka, Japan, was rescued from her kidnappers on October 23, according to Church officials in Japan. Ms. Kawamoto had been missing since August, and her fiancé and other members of her congregation assumed that she had been kidnapped and subjected to coercive conversion known as “deprogramming.” Her fiancé was able to find her mother at home, although she would not open the door.

Members of Okayama Parish and North Osaka Parish united to get her out of captivity with the help of a lawyer. They were able to enter the apartment where she was being held, according to church sources. Her parents called police and asked them to help resist the rescue, but the police determined that she was an adult and did not want to stay with her parents.

Ms. Kawamoto is among five young adult church members who dropped out of sight since July and are believed to be victims of kidnapping and coercive conversion.

The other missing church members, who are believed to be kidnap victims, are the following:

Mr. Takashi Nishikawa, 26, a university student from Tsukuba city, Ibaraki. Mr. Nishikawa dropped out of sight of fellow students and church members in September. This is Mr. Nishikawa’s second experience of being kidnapped. He lived under an assumed name after he escaped from the first confinement in 2008. Ms. Momoyo Yamada, 29, from Shiraishi Ku, Sapporo-shi, Hokkaido, has been missing since September. Ms. Yamada has been with the Unification Church for about seven years and is a full-time youth minister with the church in North Tokyo.

Ms. Chiemi Goto, 29, from Fujinomiya City, Shizuoka, a youth leader of the North Tokyo Arakawa Church, has been missing since August. Mr. Kazuya Higashi, 28, from Nara, a leader of Tohoku University CARP, has been missing since July.

Since 1966, more than 4,000 Unification Church members have been kidnapped and subjected to faith-breaking efforts by relatives and opponents of the church. According to some who survived these psychological ordeals, some parents who confined their own children were aided by Christian ministers who hoped to convert the Unificationist into a loyal member of their own congregation. Other parents paid contractors and others who oppose the Unification Church. The contractors, who call themselves “deprogrammers,” usually require that close relatives of the victim do the kidnapping and confinement, after which the deprogrammers subject the victim to long sessions of verbal abuse, humiliation, physical abuse, and in some cases torture which may last for years. The deprogramming contractors charge fees upwards of $70,000, according to church members who were victims. Some church members have committed suicide while in captivity, church officials have alleged.

Mr. Toru Goto was kidnapped in 1995 and held for twelve years and five months before he was released in February 2008. During the last two years of his confinement, he was subjected to forced starvation, causing him to lose more than half of his normal body weight. Human rights observers have taken note that despite dozens of formal complaints to Japanese authorities since the early 1970s, not a single case of kidnapping and forced confinement has resulted in a criminal prosecution.

In other developments, the U.S. State Department mentioned again this year Japan’s neglect of the religious kidnapping problem in its annual religious freedom report released on October 26.

According to the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2009/127272.htm, a division of the State Department, “The Unification Church reports that on February 10, 2008, an adult member of the Church who had been held against his will by his family members for over 12 years was released and went to Unification Church headquarters. The Unification Church alleges no one has yet been charged.”

Dan Fefferman, president of the International Religious Freedom Coalition, tells Familyfed.org that “Today our concern is that the prosecutors will not bring the case to trial. It is a fact that in every other case where criminal charges were pressed, no indictment was handed down.”

The Japan Victims' Association against Religious Kidnapping and Forced Conversion has launched a new website with both English and Japanese articles to inform the world about all aspects of the kidnapping crisis in Japan: kidnapping.jp/index-e.html. The site gives substantial, detailed accounts of the experiences of victims.

Updates on the deprogramming battle can be found at the following sites: ICRF homepage: www.religiousfreedom.com ICRF's Religious Freedom blog, edited by Edwin Pearson. religiousfreedomnews.blogspot.com/

All who would like to sign a public petition to urge the Japanese authorities to enforce the laws regarding religious kidnapping will find it at the following link: www.ipetitions.com/petition/goto/?e

Contributed by Douglas Burton