TOKYO, Japan — For 12 years, Toru Goto did not see the sky.

In a world in which human rights organizations demand prisoners be permitted one hour’s outdoor exercise per day, that, in itself, constitutes extraordinary punishment.

Even more extraordinary: His jailers were not prison officers; they were members of Mr. Goto’s own family. His jail was not a prison cell — it was a series of locked apartments across Japan.

And his “crime?” His religion.

A follower of the Unification Church, Mr. Goto was held captive by family members who hired “deprogrammers” to leave the faith.

On Feb. 10 — the 17th anniversary of his escape — Mr. Goto, 61, held a memorial walk with fellow parishioners along his escape route and published his Japanese-language autobiography, “Desperate Struggle.”

In an interview, he also took the time to recount his experience in the church’s Shibuya parish, Tokyo.

On Sept. 11, 1995, the then-31-year-old construction worker visited his parents’ apartment for dinner. They were antagonistic toward his faith, having earlier tried to convert him using both Marxist and Christian ideologies.

Considerable prejudice is aimed at the South Korean-based church, which, while Christian, has unorthodox elements not found in many other denominations. Typical iconography, such as crosses and images of Christ, are absent in its churches, replaced by portraits of the South Korean founders, the late Reverend Moon Sung-young and his wife, Hak Ja Han Moon.

The church’s Japan branch has long been the source of scrutiny for what critics say is a practice of coercing believers to make huge payments, and to purchase pricey spiritual icons. Church officials say such practices are a thing of the past.

Some consider the church, one arm of which is the parent company of the Washington Times and is formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, to be a cult. But proponents of religious freedom today consider that word prejudicial, preferring the term “new religion.”

Twelve years a prisoner of conscience

Braving social prejudice and familial pressure, Mr. Goto has remained faithful. He vividly describes that September night in 1995, when, after dinner with his parents, elder brother and the in-laws of his siblings, his father told him he had something to say.

It was a signal. Three persons hiding in the apartment emerged and grabbed Mr. Goto. He was dragged outside, through the darkness, into a car with a portable lavatory installed.

The car drove for hours. In Niigata City he was dragged into a sixth-floor apartment. The front door and every window — all with frosted glass, to prevent outside views — were locked. So began his ordeal.

Family members rotated to the apartment to feed him — and to prevent him from leaving. Periodically, “de-programmers” arrived to try to convince him, via hours-long harangues, to renounce his faith, which they claimed was propagated by an “evil church” and a “criminal organization.”

Some were Christian pastors. Others were ex-Unification Church members. “Twenty ex-members joined,” he said. “They were all victims of deprogramming.”

Weeks passed. Then months. Then years.

Mr. Goto’s father died in 1997. He was moved to another apartment in Tokyo, then another, named “Flower Home.”

Eventually, the “deprogrammer” sessions ceased. It was just him and his family. Mr. Goto stuck to his faith, while his family’s campaign to make him renounce his faith frayed.

“My younger sister could not marry. My elder brother and his wife could not have children,” he said. “They thought they could not [endure] any more sacrifice.”

On Feb. 10, 2008, matters came to a head: Frustrated family members picked him up, dragged him to the apartment door, dumped him outside and then hurled a pair of shoes after him.

Stunned, his first reaction was to knock on the door and ask for cash. He was penniless. He was told to shut up.

Then he noticed the sky — a view he had not seen for 4,536 days.

“I was so moved,” he said. “I realized I was free.”

It was mid-afternoon. On the street, he staggered to a local police box. The officers he spoke to could not comprehend his story.

He continued, but could not walk far. Having been on hunger strike, he was emaciated, while his legs, unused for years, lacked the strength to walk. Photos taken days later show him emaciated — weighing just over 100 pounds — with bandaged legs due to falls.

He begged passersby for cash. Remarkably, the second person he asked was a fellow Unification Church adherent. She gave him 1,000 yen, enough for a taxi to the Unification Church in Shibuya. Astonished church members took him inside, and subsequently to a hospital to begin his recovery.

Damage was severe. “I used to have excellent vision, but developed myopia during confinement,” he said. “For several years after release, I had psychological damage.”

A greater loss was irreplaceable. “I’d lost 12 years of life,” he realized.

’New religions’ vs. ’deprogrammers’

The practice of “deprogramming” members of new and persecuted religions has largely ceased in liberal democracies, said Massimo Introgivne, a prominent Roman Catholic sociologist who researches and publishes on religious freedom issues worldwide. Amid multiple cases in the U.S. in the 1990s — the “Cult Wars” — the practice fell into disrepute.

“Virtually all Catholic experts on ’cults,’ including those very much opposed to them, and most (but not all) Protestants are opposed to deprogramming as a criminal activity and as a sin,” he said.

However, the practice persists in Japan and South Korea, he said. The argument of deprogrammers is that new and emerging faiths such as the Unification Church “are not religions, but anti-social organizations, so there is no violation of freedom of religion.”

Mr. Introgivne, managing director of the Turin-based Center for Studies on New Religions and a witness in related court cases, called that stance “obviously BS.” He considers those who “deprogram” persons of “cult” beliefs for payment by family members to be criminals.

The church’s legal affairs department raised Mr. Goto’s case with Japanese authorities, but police declined to probe what they said was an intra-family matter. Prosecutors dropped his case for lack of evidence.

Civil suits against persons involved were more fruitful. Though they appealed to the High Court, then Japan’s Supreme Court, Mr. Goto was awarded damages of 22,000,000 yen - just $15,235 - when the case was finally adjudicated in 2015.

That precedent dissuaded some deprogrammers, but the Unification Church in Japan faces a new threat: dissolution.

In 2022, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was murdered by a fanatical anti-church activist. Subsequently, major links were discovered between the church — which always took a strong anti-communist stance — and Abe’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party, long the most powerful political force in the country.

The ruling party, embarrassed, slashed links with the church. Activists — including ex-church members and longtime left-wing figures critical of the church’s conservative stances — joined a state-led campaign against the church.

Against this tense backdrop, Mr. Goto now works for the church and leads the group’s Japan Victims’ Association Against Religious Kidnapping and Forced Conversion.

Like fellow worshippers, he is quietly determined — which explains why he clung so tightly to his faith.

“It’s the same as the ancient Christians who devoted their lives to their faith,” he mused. “They were killed by lions.”

He admits, however, one irreplaceable sense of loss.

“Now 17 years have passed, I want to recover my relationship with my family but I still feel fear,” he said. “As a man of faith, I think I have to recover it — but I can’t.”

• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.