You certainly didn’t read that headline wrong: a man was cleared of an upskirting charge against a woman for being sexually attracted to Gundams. Upskirting is when photos are taken up the skirt.
Have you ever played any game from the Ace Attorney series? This is a series of games where you control a defense lawyer (in most games you are Phoenix Wright) and go to court to defend your clients with everything you are entitled to, even calling a parrot to testify.
Man Cleared of Upskirting Charge for Being Sexually Attracted to Gundams
ABEMA TV brought this Ace Attorney-style defense in a recent program that attracted attention. The case itself occurred in 2007. It was still the time of flip cell phones. A 24-year-old man was on an escalator and was accused of taking a photo up the skirt of the woman in front of him.
At the time, the woman noticed, confronted the man, and he apologized for what happened. The case ended up going to court. During the trial, the accused stated that he did not have any voyeuristic photos. Now comes the “Ace Attorney” part of the case: the accused’s defense attorney then pointed his finger in the air and shouted “Objection!” said that his client didn’t have photos of women because he was, in fact, sexually attracted to Gundams and not to women (Okay, it didn’t happen exactly like that but okay).
It is worth noting that the accused’s cell phone was searched and no photos of women were discovered. Apparently, what really happened that day was the following: the woman in a skirt was in front of the man, and he had his cell phone open, however, instead of taking photos, the man was actually admiring images of Gundams!
This did not save him, and the man ended up being found guilty because, in his interaction with the woman, after she confronted him, he apologized. However, the lawyer did not give up on the case and decided to appeal.
The lawyer then suspected that his client might have Asperger’s syndrome, people with this syndrome have difficulty having social interactions. The lawyer then used this to explain why the man had “confessed” to the crime when the woman confronted him.
A Rorschach test was then performed on the accused. The Rorschach test (popularly known as the “inkblot test”) is a pictorial psychological assessment technique, commonly called the projective test, or more recently the self-expression method.
However, all the answers the man gave in the test were “Pokémon”. The lawyer had already said that his client was an otaku. After the appeal, the man was acquitted of the crime because the court concluded that he had no sexual interest in either men or women.
