Police arrested a TV reporter and a gas station attendant in Fukuoka Prefecture on Sunday on suspicion of gang-raping a high school student last November, local police said.
The suspects are identified as Hiroyuki Kitamura, 29, a reporter at RKB Mainichi Broadcasting Corp., and Toshio Tashima, 39. They both have admitted to the allegations, according to the police.
"If the suspicions are true, then these are intolerable crimes and we are very sorry for that," said a spokesperson of RKB Mainichi. "We will respond harshly after we confirm the facts."
The two men are suspected of forcefully taking a 17-year-old girl, whom they met through a mobile phoned dating site, to a hotel in the city of Onojo. They also told her they would "bury (her) on a mountain" and "kill (her)" if she screamed for help, and gang-raped her at the hotel, the police said.
Kitamura has been covering sports news since 2004 at RKB Mainichi, which is the Fukuoka-based affiliate station of Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc. He joined the company in April 2000 and had also covered general news.
The charge of gang rape was included in Japan's penal code in January 2005 in the light of a gang rape incident involving a student club called Super Free at Tokyo's Waseda University.
Those found guilty of gang rape are subject to a prison term of at least four years, receiving longer jail sentences than those who are found guilty over a rape -- which results in at least a three-year prison term.
