20 Chilling Cases of Patricide and Matricide from History

20 Chilling Cases of Patricide and Matricide from History

Steve - October 23, 2018

20 Chilling Cases of Patricide and Matricide from History
Chiyo Aizawa; date unknown. Wikimedia Commons.

7. Chiyo Aizawa strangled her father after he repeatedly raped and impregnated her over a 15 year period of imprisonment

Chiyo Aizawa (b. 1939 CE) was the first of six children born to Takeo Aizawa and Rika Aizawa. Her father was an alcoholic and highly abusive towards his family members, with her mother fleeing in 1953 but leaving behind her children; from then on, Takeo systemically raped Chiyo. By the time Rika returned several years later in an attempt to stop such treatment of her daughter, Chiyo had become pregnant 11 times. From these pregnancies, Chiyo gave birth to five daughters, two of whom died in infancy, and had 6 abortions; after the sixth in 1967, Chiyo underwent medical sterilization.

In 1968, Chiyo fell in love with a 22-year old man and sought to leave her father; in response, Takeo imprisoned her and threatened to kill her children should she seek to escape. On October 5, 1968, Chiyo strangled her father and was subsequently charged with parricide: a crime which carried the penalty of either death or life imprisonment under Article 200 of the Criminal Code of Japan. Even with the maximum permissible reductions due to mitigating circumstances applied in sentencing, Chiyo still faced incarceration for three and a half years; her lawyer contested this was unreasonable, given that Chiyo acted in self-defense and had been mentally incapacitated due to her horrific treatment. Whilst Tokyo High Court disagreed, in a landmark decision the Supreme Court of Japan struck down Article 200 in April 1973 and Chiyo was sentenced to a three-year suspended sentence.

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