Ex-school principal kept obscene videos of female students in his office to prevent his wife from finding them

TOKYO — A former principal at Miharadai Junior High School in Tokyo’s Nerima Ward went on trial this week after being charged with possessing 48 obscene videos and photos of female students he previously taught at a different school.

Police said Hisayoshi Kitamura, 55, has admitted to possessing the obscene material and keeping them in a locked drawer in his office. Kitamura pleaded guilty during the opening session of his trial on Tuesday and said that “it would be a waste to delete the data, and I didn’t want my wife to find out,” Kyodo News reported.

Kitamura, who had been been at Miharadai Junior High School since 2019, was arrested in September on suspicion of violating the child prostitution and pornography law after the images of young girls were found on his video camera and other devices.

The court heard that police had been investigating Kitamura since November 2022, when the Tokyo metropolitan government Board of Education received a complaint that he had been sexually harassing a young woman.

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