Japanese faces sex charges

A 30-year-old Japanese engineer of a construction firm is now facing deportation proceedings at the Bureau of Immigration (BI) after his secretary accused him of sexual harassment.

Todashi Yashida, electric manager of Sumisetsu Philippines Inc. (SPI), will have to appear before the immigration bureau on Feb. 14 and face the suit filed by his secretary, Maria Gutierrez.

BI Assistant Commissioner Linda Hornilla had set the preliminary hearing after the 32-year-old SPI employee filed a complaint against Yoshida and SPI president Koya Matsunami on November of last year.

In her complaint, Gutierrez, wife of People's Journal editor Ares Gutierrez, said she had been keeping to herself the advances of Yoshida since 1997 but she decided to press charges only recently.

"I could no longer bear it, the last incident of harassment was when he attempted to grab and kiss me (on Oct. 19, 1999)," she narrated as she revealed her employers had been asking her out, to which she had always declined.

Gutierrez revealed Yoshida would arrange "closed door conferences with me," and would keep asking about her personal life. At one time, she said, Toshida "insisted that I stay at the office so that we could go home together and demanded that I ride with him in his car."

Guiterrez said she had already reported "six times" in 1997 the sexual harassment to Hiroshi Yamamoto, SPI's personal officer, and later to Koya Matsunami, the company president, but no action was taken.