The Most Disturbing Torture Case in History
She was only 16-years-old, and she went through what was described as “44 days of hell”.
There are many cases of horrible tragedies that have happened to people around the world. The case of Junko Furuta is one of the worst torture cases that’s known. She was only 16-years-old, and she went through what was described as “44 days of hell”. She became known throughout Japan and around the world after the brutality that she endured.
Junko Furuta attended high school in Misato, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. She was rather popular in her school, she was known for not doing any bad activities. Hiroshi Miyano, one of her schoolmates who was involved in gang activity, had a crush on her. He tried to date her, but she turned him down. He was involved with the Yakuza, a well-known Japanese gang. He was furious that Junko turned him down, so he and three other boys kidnapped her on November 25, 1988. They took her to one of their parents' houses in the Ayase district of Adachi, Tokyo. After kidnapping her, they forced her to call her parents and tell them that she’d run away to stay with a friend but wasn’t in danger. This prevented a search party from looking for her sooner.
The parents of the boy knew that Junko was being kept in her house. At first, she was forced to pretend that she was one of their girlfriends. When it became apparent that she was being held captive, the parents didn’t do anything to help her. She was held captive for 44 days, and she went through horrible torture. The following content can be triggering, so if you’re sensitive to topics of violence, you won’t want to read about what happened to her. The acts she went through were highly disturbing and the trauma is unimaginable.
The poor girl endured pure suffering. They kept her naked most of the time to humiliate her. The boys and others sexually assaulted her every day. The boys invited Yakuza members into the home to violate her, and it’s believed that more than 100 men did these acts to her. She sometimes had multiple men assault her in one day. They beat her with different objects and forcefully inserted different objects inside of her. They gave her very little food and water, and they also forced her to eat cockroaches and drink her own urine to survive. They mutilated different parts of her body and dropped dumbbells on her stomach which resulted in the losing control of her bowels. They would force her into a freezer, and they also burned her, even burning off her eyelids.
While she was a quarter through the torture she had to endure, she couldn’t breathe through her nose due to the accumulation of blood in her cavities. Her captors punished her when she’d soil the carpet, and her traumatized organs refused to accept food and water, which led to her vomiting when she drank water. At one point, she tried to call the police, but she was caught and had her feet burned. After 20 days, severe leg burns and muscle bruising left her unable to walk. Her hands were so badly damaged that she couldn’t hold anything anymore, and they forced her to sleep on the balcony so that the winter temperatures would hurt her. After 30 days, she couldn’t urinate properly due to damage, and her eardrums were damaged, along with her brain size being reduced.
Her Death and Captors
Junko had begged her captors multiple times to just kill her. Instead, they continued to put her through horrible torture for 44 days. On January 4, 1989, her captors challenged her to a game of Mahjong Solitaire. She won, which upset the boys. This resulted in them beating her and setting her on fire. Due to the state she was in, she fell into shock and died the following day. They stuffed her body inside of a 55-gallon drum and filled it with concrete, disposing of it in Koto, Tokyo.
The Japanese court withheld the names of her four main captors because they were juveniles. However, journalists from the Shukan Bunshun magazine found their names and published them, stating that they didn’t deserve to have their rights upheld after what they had done. Her captors were: Hiroshi Miyano, who was 18 at the time, Jo Ogura, who was 18 at the time, Shinji Minato, who was 16 at the time, and Yasushi Watanabe, who was 17 at the time. All four were caught and tried, but they were tried as juveniles. Three of the boys served less than eight years in jail, with the leader being sentenced to 20 years. Forensic examiners found sperm and pubic hair of others on Junko’s corpse, which allowed them to link more people to her torture.
What Happened to Her Captors?
Along with the horrors of Junko’s torture, her case also depicts the horrors of a failed legal system. After all that her captors had put her through, they received very lenient punishments. Hiroshi Miyano, the main boy who put her through her torture, was released from prison in 2009. The other three were released much earlier. The details of what she went through were so terrible that some people fainted upon hearing them in the courtroom, and the more brutal instances weren’t included in this article. It’s believed that the boy's ties to the Yakuza are what got them to have lighter sentences.
The police were notified that there was a girl being held captive inside of the house twice, yet both times they didn’t go and do a deep investigation. This means that Junko likely could have been found alive if the police did more. Her body was found completely on accident after police questioned Miyano and Ogura about a different charge, and when they brought up the open investigation of Junko, Miyano thought Ogura already confessed and then told police where they dumped her body. Without him accidentally turning himself in, they may have never even found her body.
What happened to Junko is one of the most brutal torture stories in history, and all of this happened to a teenager. Despite all of the things she went through, her captors received little prison time. If the police had done more, she may have never died in the first place. May the poor girl rest in peace.