A man who was a member of an association for sexual abuse victims of Johnny Kitagawa, the late founder of Japanese boyband agency Johnny & Associates, has died in what local media is reporting as a possible suicide.
The unnamed man was in his 40s and was found in the mountains in Minoo in Japan‘s Osaka Prefecture in mid-October alongside what is believed to be a suicide note, the Kyodo News agency said.
He had claimed to have been sexually abused by Kitagawa. A representative for the association previously said that the group had received a barrage of online abuse since it was formed.
In early October, Johnny & Associates rebranded and split into two companies after the the pop giant acknowledged that Kitagawa, who died in 2019 at age 87, had sexually abused boys signed by the agency over a span of several decades.
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