※Editor’s Note: This series documents attorney Lee Eunui’s legal battles on sexual violence and #MeToo cases, which have brought controversy in Korean society for the last several years.

 

#MeToo accusations in the sports community: sexual abuse by a coach

 

In January 2019, Shim Sukhee, an Olympic medalist, drew the public’s attention to sexual harassment in the sports community with her #MeToo accusation. As an attorney handling a series of #MeToo cases one after another, a surge of inquiries made my life hectic. One Sunday, I went to my office to prepare legal documents that I could not complete during workdays, and then I got a call from a cub reporter whom I had never met before.

 

I was told that there was a victim who was sexually abused by her coach during her school days. She made an accusation in March 2018 that was sent to the prosecutors’ office with the recommendation not to prosecute, and the prosecutor suspended the indictment. The call carried the reporter’s enthusiasm for this case and endeavors to study its legal background, but more than anything else, the reporter showed genuine care about the victim’s tough circumstances. The reporter said, “Please give her a chance. She’s struggling financially.”

 

That was how it went. I agreed to meet the victim, Shin Yuyong, a former national judo team athlete, the next evening. On January 15, 2019, Ms. Shin showed up for our first meeting with a bucket hat pressed down on her head and thick makeup, so thick that I hardly saw her eyes. It turned out that she was suffering from an acute panic disorder at that moment.

 

The perpetrator reached out to the victim after she became an adult, persistently reviving his existence each time she was beginning to forget. In the spring of 2018, she determined to end the pain of the past and the anxiety of the present by filing a lawsuit against him. However, the investigative agency and the victim public defender system failed to fully understand the complicated history that began in her school days and her condition. Even though she was a grown-up, she was still a student with no people around to give her a hand.

 

Desperately longing to punish the perpetrator, she stepped forward on social media and revealed her experience of sexual violence. She then faced the public’s indifference. That situation took a new turn as her exposé on social media garnered attention after Ms. Shim’s #MeToo accusation highlighted the issue of sexual violence in the sports community. Interview requests flooded in from everywhere, and the anxiety and desperation drove her to accept every one of them. She had to repeatedly recount the memories she wanted to let go, until panic disorder symptoms developed and she passed out. She confessed that she had visited an emergency room right before our meeting to get IV treatment.

 

▲ During the criminal trial, Ms. Shin gained strength from local women’s organizations who rallied to support her by picketing and attending the trial. She had been alone in high school, but now she was surrounded by people who supported her. ⓒShin Yuyong

After listening to her and seeing how the investigation had proceeded, I was upset.   Unfortunately, I didn’t have the ability to take on another case. As I was torn about what to do, Ms. Shin got a call from the Gunsan Branch of the Jeonju District Prosecutors' Office. I asked her to give me the phone to do some fact checking with the prosecutor. The voice over the phone sounded delighted: “Are you going to take her case?” To continue the conversation, I said yes and threw a couple of questions. The prosecutor, thankfully, had [merely] imposed a temporary stay in proceedings as they could not get in touch with the victim. The prosecutor asked if Ms. Shin wanted to prepare another statement, and she promised to cooperate with the proceedings as much as necessary.

 

While I was explaining what I had just heard from the prosecutor to Ms. Shin, her phone rang again from the same caller. The prosecutor said they had reported to the higher-ups that I had taken on the case and wanted to set the date for an investigatory meeting immediately. I hung up the phone and told Ms. Shin that “I guess it was my fate to take this case.” She responded, “I came here to get you as my attorney by any means.”

 

The reality revealed by four prosecutor investigations

 

Taking her case, I straightened up several things. I decided not to let the victim directly deal with the media so that we could focus instead on the investigation to indict the coach for sexual assault and avoid unnecessary misunderstanding or noise. What the victim needed the most was rest for her body and soul. I wanted to make a statement asking the press to refrain from contact that could weigh on the victim as she was now with her legal representative, but I was not sure how. So, even though it might not have been the best way, I uploaded a simple notice on my Facebook account. Fortunately, as the #MeToo movement was at its height, the message was spread widely.

 

In about a 40-day period during the winter of 2019, the Gunsan Branch of the Jeonju District Prosecutors' Office carried out a series of four supplementary investigations. The interviews [of Ms. Shin] for these began in the morning and ended in the middle of the night. Three out of four times, the interview ended just in time for us to make the last train back to Seoul, but the other time it lasted until after the last train had left the station. Although it was a tiring and time-consuming process, no one—neither the investigator, nor the one under investigation, nor the one sitting there with them—ever complained.

 

At that time, it was statutory rape to have sexual intercourse with a minor under 14 years old. Ms. Shin was first sexually assaulted when she was 16 years old. The abuse lasted over a year, and she could not report it to the police because she was a student under the abuser’s guidance. Matters that do not require any explanation outside of the court do require one inside the court, where the punishment of the accused is on the table, especially when he could deny his criminal acts, distort reality, or state what happened in a way that favors him.

 

As her family was financially struggling, the victim had chosen a middle school that had offered her a judo scholarship, and then she went to a high school operated by the same foundation. The perpetrator, newly hired as her coach during her first year of high school, seriously abused the students in the name of discipline. Just because she gained a few hundred grams of weight after a weekend visit to her home, he whipped her with a yellow hose nicknamed “danmuji [yellow pickled radish]” and even strangled her. The perpetrator also punched Ms. Shin until she lost consciousness in front of all of the judo competitors in school, but no one dared to step in. Because the world of sports is already one dominated by a clear hierarchy, she was slowly tamed by the coach’s violence and came to have a narrow-minded obsession with judo.

 

Then one day the sexual abuse started. Not long after the first incident, an indecent act by compulsion, he sexually assaulted her, and she resisted but to no avail. The perpetrator said, “The judo team will have no future if you tell anyone about this,” and, “Neither of us would be able to live in this country any longer,” right after an act of sexual violence. Ms. Shin was young and clueless about the future. Her mother worked at a car wash to raise four children alone, which made it difficult for her to visit the school often. The victim was worried about deeply upsetting her mother, and anyway, her mother did not seem to have any resources to resolve such an immense situation. So she didn’t tell her mother until after her experience was reported in the media.

 

▲ Iksan Station, which Ms. Shin and I traveled through many times to get to the Gunsan Branch of the Jeonju District Prosecutors' Office for cooperation with the prosecutor's investigation of the plaintiff. ⓒShin Yuyong

A centuries-old barrier made of prejudice often blocks people from fully understanding the circumstances of a victim who is poor, young, and exposed to repeated sexual violence. Victims have to explain and provide good grounds about how they were exposed to sexual violence, how their stories were covered up by the perpetrator, and how vulnerable they are. Furthermore, police, prosecutors, and judges have different backgrounds from the victims. No matter the type of questions they ask, they want the same logical conclusion during investigations and trials. That conclusion is the victim’s statement. That also requires the process of collecting every possible piece of evidence that can enhance the reliability of such a statement.

 

We submitted Ms. Shin’s cell phone as evidence, as well as her high school diary that had all sorts of personal thoughts in it. A student who participated in the same field training in high school made statements by sending messages online.

 

The prosecutor asking questions, the attorney helping out—they were all out of breath, but Ms. Shin was collected. Except this one day when she shed tears for the first time. It was the time when she was asked, “Why didn’t you tell your mother?” Seemingly out of nowhere, she suddenly said my hands were soft and tender, unlike her mother’s, who is the same age as me. Then she went on to talk about her mother working hard at a car wash until her hands became rough. It was neither a cohesive nor logical story, but she put all of us into her position, a first-year high school student who overcame daily harsh training thinking about her mother. The prosecutor doing the interrogation and I could not hold back tears.

 

A 19-year-old, left alone without her dream

 

On the first day we were to visit the Gunsan Branch of the Jeonju District Prosecutors' Office, Ms. Shin missed the train to Iksan. I had to wait for her for over an hour, so I went out of Iksan Station. I found the surrounding area bare and empty. Ms. Shin’s experience of sexual violence lasted about a year, until she got a judo injury that put her in the hospital while a few seasons changed. After recovering from the injury, she gave up on judo. The injury was not the only reason for it. The sexual violence cast a large shadow over her mind. As she quit judo and turned 19, she found herself alone here in Iksan. Her friends chose a works team or entered college, but she had nowhere to go.

 

Her mother recommended she sign up for a hagwon to become a licensed practical nurse, saying a white uniform would be as good as a white judogi. Nineteen-year-old Shin Yuyong needed more than a year to find a different dream. She then came to Seoul and prepared to get into college while working a part-time job. At last, she became a freshman, at a slightly older age than the ordinary. This story had been colorless to me when I heard it in Seoul, but it gained its colors as I waited for Ms. Shin while standing in front of Iksan Station in its winter solitude.

 

When the fourth and final prosecutor’s interview came to an end, the last train was about to leave the station. We decided to give up on returning to Seoul and instead, we stayed at a motel near the station. Enjoying instant ramen and beer, we watched dated Korean movies and giggled about our favorite actors. At last, the investigation was finally over!

 

▲ Shin Yuyong graduated from an arts college around the time the lawsuit she had started by filing a criminal complaint against her ex-coach ended in conviction. ⓒShin Yuyong

The perpetrator countersued the victim for false accusation

 

[In Korea, a person who reports false information to a public office or a public official for the purpose of having a criminal or disciplinary punishment imposed upon another may be punished under the law.]

 

On March 4, 2019, the Gunsan District Prosecutors' Office requested an arrest warrant for the perpetrator, and fortunately—no, rightly—Gunsan District Court determined to arrest him. The perpetrator claimed that he had been in a romantic relationship with his then-16-year-old student and sued the victim for falsely accusing him. Moreover, his wife, who used to be Ms. Shin’s teacher, filed a lawsuit against Ms. Shin for being his mistress.

 

[In Korea, if one person in an affair knows the other is married and commits adultery anyway, the spouse can file a lawsuit for damages against the affair partner.]

 

Each time we went to the criminal trial at the Gunsan District Court, a group of local civil activists, including women’s groups, showed their support for us. They gathered for picketing outside the court in the early morning. Ms. Shin and I were deeply moved by their actions. However, the court dampened our spirits. On the first day of the trial, the judges decided to hold a closed trial. Many supporters who attended the trial had to leave the court without knowing the reason. We desperately raised objections, but nothing changed. Some people even assumed that it was the victim’s idea, so we stated outright to the media that the victim had wanted a public trial.

 

The perpetrator—the “accused” at that time—still insisted that he and Ms. Shin were in a romantic relationship, so it was inevitable that she would have to testify as a witness. During the prosecutor’s investigations I learned that the victim was of strong character, but the fact that she was barely over twenty and that she had to go through the process of testifying weighed heavily on my mind. A few days before the trial, I met Ms. Shin to prepare her and give her a pep talk. However, she ended up encouraging me instead.

 

She said, “I felt helpless. I believed that I couldn’t live a happy, normal life, and I was ruined by the sexual violence that happened to me, at that young age, so routinely and as if it were natural. But I spoke out about my victimization and received unexpected support from people. I finally realized that I am still valuable. I feel hopeful that I can live a normal life.”

 

Then she headed for her part-time job, saying she had to earn money by the sweat of her brow to pay for the paper used for her written statement for the lawsuit filed against her by the perpetrator’s wife. (to be continued in Part 2)

 

*Lee Eunui graduated from law school in 2014 and became a lawyer. She opened “Lee Eunui Law Firm” right in front of the Seoul High Prosecutors' Office and has been dealing with various cases of sexual violence and sex discrimination. She is not dreaming of extraordinary justice or immersive progress in our society, but a world with common sense, a world where reasonable thoughts and discourse are valid. She has been on the frontline of a legal battleground for nine years as a lawyer as well as a writer who published books such as Leaving Samsung, It’s Okay to Be Sensitive, Ready to Feel Uncomfortable, and Gentle Violence. [Translated by Jun Jihai] 

 

Published November 10, 2022 *Original article: http://ildaro.com/9482

 

◆ To see more English-language articles from Ilda, visit our English blog(https://ildaro.blogspot.com).

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