Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Claimed spiritual healing or mediumship Fukushima Prefecture, Japan · 2001

Japan: self-professed exorcist executed for beating six believers to death in demon-expulsion rites

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

self-professed exorcist and faith healer leading a small group of believers

Organization

No organization assigned

Spiritual nexus

CORE: every victim was one of her own believers, submitting to violence they had been taught was spiritual treatment — the doctrine is what made the beatings possible and unrefusable.

  • Exorcism or deliverance
  • Spiritual healing or treatment

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2001-01-01 · conviction affirmed at every level; executed

    Fukushima District Court; Sendai High Court; Supreme Court of Japan. Sachiko Eto, a self-professed exorcist and faith healer, was convicted by the Fukushima District Court in 2001 on six counts of murder for beating believers to death with taiko drumsticks in rituals staged as demon expulsion. The Sendai High Court upheld the conviction in 2005 and the Supreme Court of Japan in 2008; she was executed on 27 September 2012. Co-defendants Hiroshi Nemoto, Yuko Eto and Mitsuo Sekine received life and twenty-year terms.

Appellate history

  1. 2008 · undefined

    undefined

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • beatings with taiko drumsticks staged explicitly as demon expulsion
  • followers' belief that the violence was spiritual treatment

Primary record

Sources

national broadcaster court reporting execution report CBS News: 'Japan hangs cult leader convicted in exorcism deaths'.

International report of the execution and conviction history.

Related record

Related cases · Claimed spiritual healing or mediumship

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