A schoolteacher in Japan has been arrested for breaking into the home of a teenage girl using a key he copied five years ago to steal her school uniform.
At the end of May, Tokyo primary school teacher Masashi Mizuno, 39, entered the home of a secondary school girl who was his student five years previously.
He ran away immediately on discovering the girl’s father was at home, according to a report in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. He was caught by police the next day.
Mizuno told the police that he gained access to the house with a key he had copied years previously.
In 2019 when he was the girl’s teacher, he took charge of her house key at a school sporting event. It was then that he made a copy, expecting to enter her home in the future, he confessed.
“Not long ago, I suddenly remembered that this former student of mine is a secondary school student now. What’s more, I have got a duplicated key. So I decided to steal her school uniform,” the teacher, who has an apparent fetish for female school uniforms, was quoted as saying.
Parents of children who attend the school where Mizuno taught were astounded by the scandal.
“I always thought he was an excellent teacher. When we parents talked about him, all of us thought so,” one parent told the media.
The incident triggered a backlash among local residents.
“It’s horrible! This is a crime he deliberated on for five years,” said one social media observer.
Others said the man should be put under life-time surveillance.
While another person said: “The government should revoke his teacher’s licence so that he won’t return to work at school and hurt other students.”
An official from the Edogawa Education Committee said: “We apologise with deep sincerity to the affected family. We are doing our best to prevent similar incidents from happening again.”
The authorities are investigating if Mizuno has other victims.
In 2021, a man in his 50s, stole a girl’s uniform at night, wore it and hung around her school for hours before being caught by police.
