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US Marine Charged with Molesting 14-year-old Girl in Japan
The US military said Friday it had charged a 19-year-old Marine with molesting a 14-year-old girl in Japan's Okinawa island in a case that unleashed mass protests.
Marine Lance Corporal Kenny Titcomb, an electrician with the First Marine Aircraft Wing, was charged Monday in a military court at Camp Foster Marine Base on the southern Japanese island, it said.
Titcomb was accused of wrongfully drinking alcohol, drunk driving, illegal trespass, indecent assault, indecent acts and disorderly conduct, said a Marines statement.
"The charges are accusations and the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty," it said. It was not clear why the information was not released earlier.
Titcomb is being held in detention until trial, said a US Marines spokeswoman.
He was arrested on July 3 on suspicion of breaking into an unlocked apartment in Okinawa City while drunk and molesting a 14-year-old girl in her bedroom.
The girl's mother had called police.
Decades of resentment against US troops on the island peaked in 1995 when three US servicemen raped a 12-year-old girl, leading to a US-Japan agreeement to hand back some of the US base land.
Okinawa reluctantly hosts 25,000 of the 47,000 US troops stationed in Japan under a joint security agreement.
The latest incident sparked a wave of demonstrations just ahead of a July 21-23 Group of Eight summit drawing leaders including US President Bill Clinton.
About 20,000 demonstrators encircled the huge Kadena US air base on the day before the summit, demanding US forces go home.
US military chiefs tightened discipline last month, imposing a midnight curfew on all troops stationed in Okinawa.
During his visit to Okinawa for the G8 summit, Clinton told American troops and their familes at Camp Foster that they had an obligation to avoid harming their relationship with islanders.
"We know our hosts in Okinawa have borne a heavy burden, hosting half of our forces in Japan on less than one percent of its land," the US president said.
"They, too, have paid a price to preserve the peace, and that is why we need to be good neighbours to them in addition to being good allies; why each one of us has a personal obligation to do everything that we can to strengthen our friendship and to do nothing to harm it."
Clinton also expressed regret over criminal acts by US troops in a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on the sidelines of the G8 summit, according to a Japanese official.
"He said most troops are good neighbours, but he feels the cases were painful and embarrassing."
A White House official, on condition of anonymity, later stressed that Clinton only "expressed a general regret that incidents like this have happened."
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