Some men oppose stricter enforcement of sexual assault laws on the grounds they will lead to more false accusations against them. A recent social media post in Japan shot heroin into the veins of this propaganda. What’s worse, the guy’s claims made the news before Internet sleuths shot them down. In this case, medical experts say the lie further disadvantages women who are already at higher risk of death than men when a medical incident occurs.
A fishy story
Social media influencer Takizawa Gareso (who broke the sushi terrorism story) summarized the basics last month. X user Hamagawa Masato (@masa0077) posted in response to another user that he had once used an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) to save a woman who’d collapsed on the street.
“Since she was in cardiopulmonary arrest, I covered her up with a blanket and, naturally, did my best not to look while administering CPR. An ambulance took her away and she survived,” he says in part of the conversation preserved on the site posfie.
He claims he rode in the ambulance with the woman and handed his business card off to a nurse before leaving the hospital. Later, however, he says the police showed up, telling him the woman had filed sexual assault charges over his use of the AED. He claims he settled the matter out of court.
A history of tall tales
The dude’s claims made it onto a segment of ABEMA News, part of online entertainment company ABEMA. Remarkably, the video is still up, featuring the man’s claims in full as part of a larger report about male hesitancy to provide medical assistance to women.
As Gareso notes, though, netizens were immediately suspicious. Yoneyama Ryuichi, a member of the Lower House of Japan’s Diet and an MD, noted that there wouldn’t be an AED or a blanket available on a street. Additionally, paramedics wouldn’t let someone without a personal relationship with a victim ride in an ambulance with them.
Finally, Yoneyama argued that police would have deferred to the medical professionals’ judgment that the man’s actions were necessary. Even if something suspicious occurred, police likely wouldn’t launch an investigation out of fear of dissuading future lifesavers.
As netizens dug further, they discovered the poster in question had a long and lurid history of making up outrageous stories of his heroism. In December 2024, he claimed he’d found a duralumin case on top of a building that looked like it belonged to a sniper. The same month, he claimed someone had once stabbed him and left him to die on a train track at Okayama Station. They even discovered he’d posted the AED story before – in 2018.
Hamagawa has since privated his account. ABEMA hasn’t filed a retraction of the claim in the video. When reached recently by Asahi Dot AERA, the company replied with a “no comment.”
The risk to women’s lives
False reporting of any crime, including sexual assault, is a serious problem. While there are no firm statistics available, some estimates conclude that false accusations of rape may account for anywhere from 5% to 19% of charges.
Conversely, however, many women who are victims of sexual assault don’t report it. They either think that police won’t believe them or are afraid social media misogynists will harass them if they step forward. One report in Japan that investigated train molestation found that up to 80% of incidents may go unreported.
Japan has also seen several high-profile cases in recent years where courts let rapists off the hook despite clear-cut evidence of culpability. Such actions further erode women’s trust in the system and willingness to report.
As Yoneyama Ryuichi indicated, police are unlikely to charge a man with any form of sexual assault for saving a woman’s life. However, the fear that they might negatively impacts women’s health.
As Asahi Aero DOT reports, a survey of 500 people in 2023 showed that men are already resistant to touching a woman in medical distress. 53.8% say they’re hesitant to touch a woman’s skin, with another 34% saying they’re afraid of sexual assault charges.
This hesitancy kills women. Of around 350,000 medical incidents researched by Kumamoto University, rescuers used an AED on 3.2% of all male patients – but only 1.5% of female patients.
Information va. hysteria
To counteract this, medical experts are urging men not to hesitate to help anyone in distress. They emphasize it’s not necessary to remove any undergarments, like bras, before placing an AED pad on someone. You should, however, ensure you’re not placing it against a pacemaker or the metal clips on a bra. They also encourage AED users to put their phones on speaker while talking with emergency personnel so they can hear the AED’s automated instructions and provide additional assistance.
AEDs are essential life-saving devices. The American Heart Association says the devices are used in 28.7% of some 42,000 cases of cardiac arrest in the US. In 4.6% of those cases, bystanders are the ones administering care.
In Japan, the country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications says it takes an average of 10 minutes for emergency personnel to arrive at a scene. For each minute after a cardiac arrest event, a victim’s chances of survival decrease by seven to 10%. In other words, fast action by those already on the scene is essential to a victim’s survival.
As emergency medical expert Yakushiji Hiromasa says in a comment on Yahoo! News JP: “Don’t we want a society where everyone can rest assured that they can get lifesaving care at any time?”
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