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A former Fuji Television Network Inc employee expressed both relief and frustration in a statement Tuesday after a third-party panel report concluded she was sexually assaulted by famed former TV host Masahiro Nakai. "My honest feeling is that I was relieved after the release of the panel report and its conclusions," the woman said in a statement issued by her lawyer. The independent committee said Monday that the former employee was subjected to a "serious infringement of human rights" that occurred "as an extension of her job," and that top executives "lacked understanding of sexual violence and showed insufficient concern for helping the victim.
" Nakai was allowed to appear in shows for around a year and a half after the top executives learned of the incident. The committee was set up in January to probe Fuji TV's response after a weekly magazine reported that he engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with a woman at a June 2023 dinner, later paying her a 90 million yen ($600,000) out-of-court settlement. The former employee's statement also described "renewed feelings of frustration" as the panel's nearly 400-page report revealed information she learned for the first time about the responses of Nakai and then Fuji TV President Koichi Minato.
"What I have suffered will not go away for as long as I live, and what I have lost will not come back," she said, adding, "I wish from my heart that cases like mine will disappear not just from the media entertainment industry but from society entirely." A lawyer on the panel said Monday that the probe found a "persistent culture of sexual harassment at Fuji TV." The panel's findings have received national attention, with Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Seiichiro Murakami saying Tuesday he intends to "confirm the report's contents and quickly consider an appropriate response.
" Shares in parent company Fuji Media Holdings Inc. briefly jumped 7 percent Tuesday, as market players deemed the panel emphasized the broadcaster's culpability and offered a path to rebuild trust with advertisers, brokers said. Nakai, who rose to prominence as a member of the now-defunct pop group SMAP, was a famous television host before he retired from show business in January over the scandal.
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