While former NGT48 member Yamaguchi Maho has thankfully moved on successfully from her assault controversy already, the civil case over the incident was only recently settled. The outcome will likely leave some predictably unsatisfied, as the two who assaulted Maho will pay AKS damages, apologize to them, and be banned from events.
The two defendants will have to pay AKS several million yen in damages, write an official apology letter, and are banned from participating in any event related to all 48 group activities. AKS initially demanded around 30 million yen (around $277,000 USD) but it hasn’t been revealed if they had to pay the entire amount. In the apology letter Kazuhiro revealed that the two defendants did visit Maho’s home without permission and they did cause her physical and psychological harm. However, in the letter they claimed that the recorded conversation between the two men and Maho was actually not the correct explanation, which let to various misunderstandings and accusations against other NGT48 members.When the story first broke, Maho herself commented on SNS that some of her groupmates helped orchestrate the attack as told to her by the defendants. Quite a few of her group mates also continued to be rude to her while the scandal was going on. Kazuhiro claims that this “proves” the members innocence. While the trail was going on Kazuhiro and his team had 0 communication with Maho herself, just simply commenting that it was a “difficult” trail for all. Maho will not be receiving any of this compensation money as she is no longer with AKS, and they launched the lawsuit themselves, not on her behalf.
Emphasis mine.
This lawsuit was always about the interests of AKS, whose actions regarding this seemed entirely motivated by trying to “officially” clear her group members of involvement.
If it feels like they’re trying to gaslight her despite a rare occurrence where there’s actual hard recorded evidence of what she’s alleging then that’s because it’s likely what they’re gunning for, but I can’t imagine anybody reasonable actually buying into their narrative.