The Words of the Burton Family
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The Words of the Burton Family |
After years of suffering in silence, Unificationist victims of repression in Japan are taking their message to the streets and to public forums in the United States, Japan, and South Korea.
Ms. Nanae Okada Goto, a resident of the Washington, D.C. area for 11 years, told a gathering of church activists on April 17 that her father paid gangsters (known in Japan as Yakuza) $40,000 to kidnap and confine her in a condo prison twice, first in 1987 and again in 1988. She told a gathering of women in ministry at the headquarters of the American Clergy Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C. that her second confinement lasted for three years and involved frequent beatings from her father, a militant atheist.
Speaking in her native Japanese that was interpreted simultaneously, she told the group that her father often slapped her and berated her for hours at a time, and at one point threatened to take her life before he died. Her father also enlisted the aid of professional faith-breakers who subjected her to three days of grilling and verbal abuse, and a local Christian minister visited her at least 60 times in an effort to subvert her faith. In August, 1991, a Unification Church member placed a screwdriver on the outer shelf of the window of her condo prison, and she used it to remove the metal grating that covered the window.
She escaped from the condo prison on Aug. 7, 1991. "Today I am married to a wonderful man. I have a son, and my parents have embraced my family," she told the gathering.
The following day, April 18, 2010, 150 Japanese Unificationists marched in Kurashiki City in Okayama Prefecture, near Japan's west coast, to publicly accuse a local Japanese minister who specialized in helping to confine and break the faith of Unification Church members. According to the Unification Church Website in Japan, Pastor Masaharu Takayama, the head of the Kurashiki Grace Christian Church, attempted without success to break the faith of a Unification Church member last year. The faith-breaking victim was a young lady from Tottori Prefecture who was kidnapped in the Kurashiki area but who was rescued and returned to the Unification Church, according to the Japanese Unification Church website, see www.ucjp.org/?p=2077.
According to Unification church sources, some Japanese Christian ministers use forced conversion as a means of adding to the faltering numbers of their congregations. In addition, the honorariums they receive from misguided and distressed parents can be a lucrative source of side income.
"Christian ministers usually receive a payment from the parents of victims when they are asked to de-convert the victims," according to Unificationist Shunsuke Uotani, an official of the Universal Peace Federation in Japan. "The payment is estimated to be from 2 million yen to 3 million (between $20,000 and $30,000), which is a high payment relative to the normal income of a minister," he tells familyfed.org by email.
Approximately 50 Japanese women married to Korean men demonstrated at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on March 23, 2010 and presented a petition to the ambassador calling upon Japan to render to Unificationists legal protections guaranteed by the Japanese Constitution. The event was reported by the Associated Press, Reuters and 13 Asian news agencies.
According to Reuters reporter Lee Jae-Won, "The Unification Church members wanted the Japanese ambassador to ensure they are safe to return to Japan as they fear their relatives might forcibly detained them and make them renounce their religion." See news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//100323/ids_photos_wl/r479403200.jpg/
A Korean news agency, Newsis, provided more background on the demonstration. "There are estimated to be more than 7,000 Japanese women members of the Unification Church who are living in Korea with Korean husbands. Among them, 300 have the experience of escaping from being kidnapped and confined. Some 200 among them are still unable to visit their parents' homes in Japan for fear they will be abducted and incarcerated again," according to Newsis.com.
Newsis went on to report: "According to the facts confirmed by the Association of Victims of Abduction, Confinement and Forced Conversion of Japanese Unification Church Members, the reason these people cannot visit their homes in Japan is that when they reported to the Japanese police about their abduction, the police had no interest in listening to them, and even when these women notified the police after their escape, still the police did not respond, claiming that it was a family matter."
The combined reports included charges of psychological trauma to the victims as well as their physical parents. According to Newsis, "A parent eventually committed suicide after finding out that his daughter had been raped by a 'deprogrammer' he hired to persuade her to give up her faith."
Korean Media Reports On Our Fight Against Deprogramming In Japan