⛩️#52 A Kidnapped Girl Escaped, But No One Believed Her
...so she went back to her kidnapper
Poster issued after the 13-year-old's disappearance. We’ve censored it. Parents in Japan rarely publicize personal details of missing children due to fears of hounding by cranks — as happened in this case.
A Parent’s Nightmare
Late afternoon. You’re chopping carrots in your kitchen.
It’s a Monday in early March. You’ve got soy sauce, dashi, mirin and sugar simmering in a pot.
Your daughter ‘K’ is 13 years old. Grade 1 of junior high, and today was the first day of her end-of-year exams.
This is a big deal — a week that will decide her academic future — she’s been especially nervous about the geometry test — but here’s the thing: you know she’ll be okay. She’s level-headed, sensible, smart, generous, friendly.
Also: late.
You check your watch again. The nikujaga is ready. You hive off the portion you and your husband will eat later.
17:43 drums onwards to 17:44, 17:45, 17:50. ‘K’ should’ve been home an hour ago.
Maybe she stayed late at school. No: they send the students home promptly on test days. Did she pop in at a convenience store on the way home? But that wouldn’t take this long. Maybe she, maybe she — you halt the hectic calculus, because you need to do something with your hands, your legs, your body.
So you open the front door, dial your eyes in on the street corner she has to appear around — a normal suburban street corner in Asaka City, part of the collosal Tokyo Metropolis.
You wait, wait, wait for the corner to release her — but it never does.
Then you see a sliver of paper visible through the lip of your external letter box. Post? At this hour?
You fumble the combination into the lock, crack the box open:
I want to take a break from home and school. I'm staying at a friend's house for a while. Please don't look for me. (家も学校もちょっと休みたいです。しばらく友達の家です。さがさないで下さい)
That’s what the note says. And it’s in your daughter’s handwriting…
You call your husband at work — get home now. He arrives, takes one look at the note and agrees: it’s bullshit.
No way ‘K’ runs away from the happy home you’ve built.
You’ve already called school — ‘K’ took her exams, left school as scheduled — so next call is the cops.
There’s procedures and explanations and do you really want to file an official missing person report YES, PLEASE, WHERE DO I SIGN?
The cops call in the dogs. The dogs get your daughter’s scent from a piece of clothing you hand over, race off in the direction she takes to school, lose the scent 200 meters later.
After the police leave, you stay at home while your husband drives aimlessly around the city looking for your daughter.
He finds nothing.
Three days later
The police say they’re looking, they’re considering all possible scenarios.
They want to know: do you want us to publicize the search, take it nationwide? They say: it may cause risk to her life. But there’s no information coming in.
You huddle with your husband. Your daughter may be killed if you make the wrong decision. Husband says we go public. Yes, alright, good:
You go public. Posters [see top of this article] are issued. The cops put the contents of the note on it — “I want to take a break from home and school.”
Every Internet crank says it’s your fault, you put too much pressure on ‘K’. They add nuggets of bullshit to the story — their cousin’s best friend used to go to the same school and they said the teachers put so much pressure on the students…
Six days later — (9 days after ‘K’ disappeared)
Six days of nothing but idiots starting rumors — then a letter arrives at your house, postmarked Ageo City, an hour away by car.
I’m doing fine. I'm at the house of a high school student I met on chat last year. Everyone is being very kind to me. I wanted to take a break because my after-school activities and studies have been so hard. (元気ですごしている。去年、チャットで知り合った高校生のところにいます。皆さんにはよくしてもらっています。習い事とか勉強が大変だったので休みたい)
The text had been repeatedly erased and rewritten.
You and your husband agree: 1) the letter was written by your daughter, 2) it’s more bullshit.
Your daughter doesn’t have time to chat online with strangers. “Everyone is being very kind to me” implies some kind of supportive commune. It’s bullshit.
But here’s the thing: the letter means she’s alive.
The cops take the letter; it comes back no fingerprints or DNA.
And then you keep looking for your daughter, day and night, and never let your phone leave your hand. And you can't eat, and can’t stop crying, and you have a rescue pack ready, short-sleeved and long-sleeved pajamas for ‘K’, and she has sensitive skin, so you prepare organic cotton undershirts because you think the stress would make her have an allergic reaction.
And you think you have to help your daughter yourselves, so you and your husband spent every day handing out flyers but only a few people take them.
But nothing happens.
No leads, no clues, no more letters from ‘K’ — until the lead detective stops visiting and you feel like you’ve been thrown into a tunnel with no exit. Because your daughter is gone.
And that’s how two years pass.
But what you don’t yet know is this: she was kidnapped. And, within a month, she had escaped.
Except no one believed her, so she went back to her kidnapper…
Our Nightmare
In triangle ABC, what is the height AH when side BC is considered to be the base?
I don’t like geometry! Geometry is boring.
Use symbols to express the relative positions of lines ℓ and m.
The test was hard. And now you mention it, why do we have to study geometry anyway?
Well — geometry test is over now. And, remember, mom is cooking nikujaga tonight! Yeah — I’ll go home quickly and eat! Then study for tomorrow. Tomorrow is English, science, history:
In 710, the capital was moved from Fujiwara-kyo to insert correct answer, and many temples were also moved there…
The answer is Heian-kyo and I’m about to turn the last corner before home and “S— K—?”
That’s someone calling out my full name and it’s a guy sitting in a car and I don’t recognize him. But he knows my name.
I stop. “You’re S— K—, right.”
I am. He opens the car door, then drops a bomb: “Your parents are getting divorced, I want to talk to you about it. Get in the car.” (両親が離婚することになり、その話をしたい。車に乗って)
What? Divorce?!
Too late — he’s got me. Grapples me into the back seat.
Back seat, he’s in gloves, very very strong. He says: write what I tell you.
A pencil and some loose leaf paper. He dictates “I want to take a break from home and school. I'm staying at a friend's house for a while. Please don't look for me.”
Then blindfolds me.
Car door opens, closes. Getting divorced?
Am I going to live with mom or dad? Will I have to choose? Probably won’t see the other again. Thinking this in the blindfolded dark.
Car door closes. Engine starts. Moving.
I begin to count. I sit in silence.
After 241 seconds, the man shouts back at me: your father owes me money. I’m taking you as collateral.
Debt? Is money the reason they’re getting divorced? I don’t think they’re getting divorced. Does my father have a secret life? What did he spend the money on? Did I ask for something expensive? What does “collateral” mean?!?
I forgot to count. I don’t know long we’ve been driving. Did I get up to 300 or 500?
Stop. The door opens close to me. He takes off my blindfold. He’s not an old man. He’s younger than dad.
He tells me wait. We’re in a parking lot. Apartment building, vending machine, other cars. Man bends down, changes the license plate on car. Stands up again. Come on.
Walking across parking lot he says “your parents abandoned you”. Really? They would say goodbye if they were throwing me away. Divorced/father debt/abandoned me. Lots of stories.
Up stairs, into an apartment, shoes off at the genkan, old apartment, kitchen, put into a room, flooring not tatami mats. Sit down. A study desk. Will I be allowed to study for the history test?
Emperor Shomu, hoping to protect the nation and stabilize politics by the teachings of insert answer here, erected the Great Buddha in insert answer here.
Answers: “Buddhism”, “Tōdaiji”, if I have to stay here I’ll forget the answers.
He gives me a notebook, pencil, and says “you’re going to write something else for me”. More dictation — he says write 捨てられた “I was abandoned” “Write it a hundred times.”
So I do. The man tells me to sleep next, and I say “I have a history test tomorrow” but he leaves, saying “the door is locked.”
It’s true. Locked, from the outside.
I think I’m locked in a room.
It’s not a room.
It’s not a prison either.
It’s a laboratory — and I’m the subject about to be tested…
MOM?
Sunday 27 March 2016. Just over 2 years after ‘K’ disappeared.
You’re putting on your makeup in the bathroom. Your cellphone is next to you, as it has been since that day she didn’t come home from school.
The cell rings. Unknown number. You pick up.
“Mom?” says the voice on the other end.
You stop like you’ve just walked into a minefield.
“Yes.”
“It’s Y.”
The minefield turns into a typhoon.
You: “Where are you now? Is there anyone around?”
Your daughter says: “No one’s around”.
“Where are you? How are you talking to me?”
“Public phone at a station. I only have 170 yen…”
“I’m coming to get you. I’m coming to where you are. Where are you? Is there a member of staff around?”
‘K’ was at Higashi-Nakano Station in Tokyo.
Here’s how you describe what happened next:
I thought I would be able to see my daughter right away, but her rescue became breaking news, and the media flocked to the station where my daughter was taken into custody, so I couldn’t see her until we met at the police station.
When I finally met her, she was terrified and her demeanor had changed. She had no expression and looked like an empty shell.
She had escaped from her kidnapper after 2 years. And when he discovered she was gone he made his escape…
The Sadistic Experimenter
Vile numbnut ‘Suspect A’ (real name Kabu Terauchi), complete with wounds from half-assed suicide attempt. Image: Mainichi
‘K’ led the police back to the apartment she had escaped from.
It belonged to a man who came to be known as Suspect A. His real name is Kabu Terauchi.
Two days after ‘K’ escaped, Terauchi (a 23-year-old college student) was apprehended in Shizuoka Prefecture, suffering from a neck wound he explained as a failed suicide attempt.
He readily admitted to the kidnap.
The motive? “I wanted to observe what would happen if I isolated a girl from society and confined her.” (女性を社会から隔離して監禁したらどうなるのか、観察したかった)
He was a voyeur/freak who wanted to keep ‘K’ as an exhibit in a sick sociological experiment — kidnap a girl and see how her brain is warped by isolation.
‘K’ was given her own room, unfurnished except for a computer with restricted access. Every time she used the computer, Terauchi checked the history to make sure she could not obtain information that would lead to her escape or ask for help.
She was forced to order her own food using the computer; the room was kept locked and the interior lights couldn't be used, so it was pitch black at night.
Terauchi also incessantly forced ‘K’ to write or repeat his pet phrases “I was abandoned by my parents”, “I was sold”, and “I have no home to return to.”
He also attempted hypnosis and mind-control techniques, using tinctures brewed from morning glory seeds.
If there was more abuse, it was kept out of the trial.
But Terauchi’s monitoring of the computer use was not close enough to stop ‘K’: according to her later testimony “I was always watching my parents working hard to hand out flyers on the Internet.”
* * *
Terauchi had been on the lookout for months for a girl to kidnap.
He chose the streets of Asaka City because it was not too urban and not too rural.
And he had stalked ‘K’ home on a previous day, and learned her full name off a flower pot outside her house, knowing calling out to her would give him the seconds of distraction necessary to make the snatch…
No One Believed Me
It was only a month after the kidnap that ‘K’ escaped for the first time.
Terauchi left the door unlocked when he went out and K left the apartment.
Now, an American child would probably have left the place screaming “I’ve been kidnapped!”
Instead, ‘K’ walked until she found a local park.
And that was where she politely approached two women, with the very Japanese phrase chotto ii desuka?, which can be most readily translated “Could I ask you something?”
And, confronted by this 13-year-old girl, the two women said “No, we’re too busy”. ('忙しいから無理).
According to her later testimony, ‘K’ “got desperate, and started to feel scared of strangers.”
So she went back to the kidnapper’s apartment — and he didn’t let her see daylight again.
It was only two years later, after she learned her parents were looking for her, that she decided she had to try to escape again.
She chose a Sunday — because she thought her family would be at home — took 170 yen she had slowly built up by stealing from Terauchi (for a public phone call), plus her student ID, which she thought would help prove her identity.
She got out, she found the closest station, she called her mom.
Trial
Terauchi admitted his guilt, setting himself up for the maximum sentence of (a mere) 15 years (something we covered in our article on a previous high-profile child kidnap).
He then went on to give a series of extraordinary denials and victim-blaming utterances during the trial, including:
“I reckoned kidnapping wasn’t as serious as stealing a car” (誘拐は車や貴重品を盗むより軽いと思っていた)
“Putting the girl in a situation without social pressure would help her.”(競争のない状況に人（少女）を置けば人助けになる」と考えた)
“I left her home alone and went out. The bolt would’ve been easy to remove.” (彼女を置いて外出していた。かんぬき錠は取り外しは簡単だった)
When asked when he first decided to carry out his fiendish experiment:
“I think it was after I saw a book in the library (when I studied abroad in college). I was inspired by brainwashing. After coming back, I started to think about why people become lonely, and from that point on I wanted to experiment on someone.”
It was up to ‘K’’s parents to try to prick his bubble, testifying “Our daughter was so scared that she couldn't sleep until you were arrested. She never seemed to sleep well and would wake up screaming. She started having flashbacks.
That was the result of the sadistic “experiment”: trauma. Horrible, deep, complex trauma.
Sadistic Experimenter, plus Troll
After he was found guilty, Terauchi proceeded to further torture his victim and her family by baiting his way through a number of hearings that were supposed to establish his degree of criminal responsibility, and thus appropriate sentence.
On sentencing day, he entered the courtroom shouting incoherently, and when the judge asked him his name and age he replied, “Ohtani,” [name of a famous baseball player] “I'm 16 years old,” and “I'm a forest fairy.” The court adjourned for a short time but, after the defense confirmed Terauchi had been fine earlier in the day, the sentencing was postponed.
Sentence
After managing to delay sentencing for an incredible 7 months with the forest fairy bullshit, finally, in March 2018, Terauchi had to face the music.
Presiding Judge Satomi Matsubara began sentencing stating he “was fully aware of the illegality” of the crime, given the numerous signs of premeditation, such as stealing license plates so he could switch them on the kidnap vehicle.
The judge piled on further, stating the victim “lost a period of growth both physically and mentally from the first to third years of junior high school, and suffered an unimaginable blow”, plus “There is no room for leniency [remember this - Ed.] in the motive of kidnapping and confining a girl to isolate her from society and observe her changes”.
This is good, this is strong stuff.
But if you happen to suffer from a rage tic, prepare for it to be exacerbated because Matsubara went on to fart the following:
“However, the prosecution's request for a 15-year prison sentence is too severe.”
That “no room for leniency” lasted approximately half a minute…
Judge Matsubara claimed it could not be determined that Terauchi had assaulted or verbally abused the girl during her confinement. (監禁中に寺内被告が暴行、暴言を少女にしたとは認められないことなどから量刑を考慮した。)
…Then dunned him for a mere nine years in prison.
We don’t like the American justice system — it’s not justice — but there are times in life you yearn to see someone handed a demolishingly harsh sentence at a mercy-free institution.
* * *
K’s parents responded to the 9 year sentence with the type of statement whose literal, dignity-stripping English translation brings the whole language into disrepute:
We don’t think it’s possible for him to repent or rehabilitate himself in only 9 years. We would have prefered a harsher sentence. It’s unfortunate.
9年で反省や更生できるとは思えない。もっと厳しい判決を出してほしかった。残念だ。
Both prosecution and defense appealed — yes, the defense thought the sentence was too harsh.
A year later, the Tokyo High Court overturned the 9 year sentence — and replaced it with a increased 12 year term.
Here’s Judge Atsuo Wakazono: “The first trial did not properly evaluate the maliciousness of the psychological aspect of the confinement.” (一番は心理的拘束の悪質性を適切に評価していない).
Quite.
* * *
We leave the last words to ‘K’’s father:
No matter how many years it takes, I’ll help my daughter reintegrate into society. (何年かかっても娘を社会復帰させる)
Postscript
As of this writing (2025), Suspect A (real name Kabu Terauchi) has around five years remaining before he is released.
Some of his last words at trial were “At the end of the day, what did I do wrong?”「結局、何が悪い」
For an even more bizarre true kidnapping tale, read this next: The Unbelievable Story of the Missing 9-Year-Old
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Until next time,
The Kyote
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The Kyote is published in Kyoto, Japan, every Sunday at 19:00 JST
Thanks for another great article written in a very engaging way.
One point, I might be reading this wrong, but K becomes Y after 2 years .. which confused me a bit. Isn’t Y from the other kidnap? Apologies if I’m being daft.