FUKUSHIMA -- A self-proclaimed "deity" who battered six of her followers to death in 1995 while performing "exorcism" was ordered Friday to take responsibility for her crimes with her own life, a Fukushima court ruled.
Lawyers representing the deity-cum-healer, Sachiko Eto, had claimed that the 54-year-old was suffering from mental disorder at the time and could not foresee that her victims would die as a result of the beatings, but Presiding Justice Akira Hara rejected the argument.
Eto's 27-year-old lover, Yutaka Nemoto, and her 30-year-old daughter, Hiroko, were both handed an indeterminate sentence at the Fukushima District Court for their part in the fatal beatings. Mitsuo Sekine, a 52-year-old follower of Eto, was ordered to spend 18 years behind bars.
From January 1995, Eto and three others started beating her followers who lived in her house in Sukagawa, Fukushima Prefecture, with Japanese-style thick drumsticks to "expel an evil spirit" possessing them, the ruling read. She also ordered some of her followers to beat each other with drumsticks.
Within six months, six of her followers -- four of them relatives -- died as a result of the repeated bashing sessions. Their bodies were wrapped in futons and were left to rot in the house, the court heard.
Her deeds came to light in July 1995 after one of the victims of the beatings was rescued from Eto's house by her relatives, who alerted the police of the incident.
The victims were later identified as Mamoru Miki, 50, his wife Kazuko, 48, their daughter Satoe, 18, Kazuko's sister Kimiko Sekine, 46, Tatsuo Igai, 42, and Akemi Senzaki, 27. Kimiko was Sekine's wife.
Prosecutors demanded the court send Eto to the gallows, saying that her crime had nothing to do with her religion and that she just "killed people who threatened her 'divine' authority" as well as to stop Nemoto from becoming intimate with a female follower.
The presiding judge recognized that Hiroko took part in the beating because of her hatred toward her mother's followers, while Nemoto joined in to keep his affair with Eto alive. Sekine was handed the shortest sentence among the four because he beat his fellow followers to avoid being attacked by others.