[TinyRedLeaf]

Japanese mum made daughter eat 30 pet goldfish

Tokyo (Feb 17, Wed): A Japanese mother forced her teenage daughter to eat more than 30 of her pet goldfish as a punishment, police and media alleged, as the country grapples with a record number of child-abuse cases.

Yuko Ogata and her boyfriend, Takeshi Egami, made the girl eat the dead fish in June, police told AFP on Wednesday.

They have both been arrested.

The police added that the daughter was allegedly abused on a daily basis.

Local media said the couple, who live in Fukuoka prefecture in southwestern Japan, killed the fish by pouring detergent into their tank.

The girl was then forced to eat more than 30 of the fish one by one, according to the Nippon Television Network.

No damage to the daughter's health has been reported, according to local media.

Ogata and Egami were reportedly indicted last year for tying the daughter to a bed with rope, punching her in the face, and burning her tongue with a lit cigarette.

The latest arrest was their fifth since last year in relation to abuse of the child, reports said.

The case is just the latest in a string of such shocking incidents in Japan.

Last month, a three-year-old girl died after her mother deliberately poured boiling water on her, causing serious burns to her face.

Police arrested the mother and her boyfriend for negligence in caring for a child.

AFP

Just about a month ago, I compiled some information on the rising trend of child abuse in Japan. I posted them on the Boku Dake ga Inai Machi thread.

Here are the details:

(1)
I've discovered to my surprise that Japan did not start keeping a record of the number of abuse cases handled by child consultation centres nationwide until 1990.^[1]

According to Health Ministry data, there were 1,101 cases of abuse, nationwide, in 1990.^[1] By 1999, the number has increased by more than 10 times to 11,631.

In 2000, there 17,725 cases. And by 2009, there were 44,211 cases.^[2] The most recent news article I could find on the subject reported 46,468 cases in 2012, citing Health Ministry figures.^[3]

(2)
It wasn't until 2000 that the Japanese government codified a law to prevent child abuse.^[1] That law defined four categories of child abuse: physical, psychological, sexual or neglect. The same legislation also obliges a third party to report any signs of such abuse to welfare authorities.

Meaning to say, it wasn't until 2000 that it became a legal requirement to report potential signs of child abuse.

The New York Times reported: "Traditionally, the [Japanese] police rarely investigated accusations of child abuse or wife beating, believing these were issues best left to the head of the household — meaning the father or grandfather. Authorities are now struggling to figure out when and how to intervene."^[4]

The same NYT article related a heartbreaking story of a grandmother who fought for several years to take over the custody of her maternal granddaughter from the girl's abusive mother and stepfather.

The NYT reported: "Japan has tried to keep its family structure relatively intact with laws that give enormous authority to the family. The trade-off has been that abused children are sometimes trapped with abusive parents because authorities do not want to interfere."

For example, when the granddaughter first tried to run away from home, "with the help of a teacher, school director and a police official, she was kept for a few days at the local child-consultation centre. But she was returned home when her mother and stepfather demanded her back".

There were further attempts to run away, with one child centre where the girl took shelter recommending that she should not be returned home. But since it had no legal authority to keep her, the mother was again able to collect the girl.

(3)
Officials are not entirely sure how much of the spike in abuse cases can be attributed to greater awareness, thanks partly to better media coverage of individual cases. But at least one expert believes that improvements in the reporting of cases alone cannot account for the huge increase in abuse.

Professor Satoru Nishizawa, a clinical social worker who edits the Japanese Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect, said: "The increase of more complicated and pathological cases may reflect the deterioration of childcare in Japanese families."^[5]

Child advocates point to a number of other murky, societal factors: from Japan's two-decade-long economic stagnation, to the increasing numbers of divorces and re-marriages, and lack of support and affordable childcare for single mothers.^[2][4]

(4)
Meanwhile, one research paper noted that "a particular characteristic of child abuse in Japan is the extremely low proportion of sexual abuse cases reported... The proportion of sexual abuse cases is very low, at approximately 3 per cent".^[6] The paper said comparable data from the United States and other Asian countries suggest that the incidence of physical and sexual abuse to be roughly equal.

The implication is that there may be a lot more cases of sexual abuse of children — usually girls^[1] — that are not being reported, due to "low social awareness of the need to protect children when sexual abuse is discovered".^[6]

(5)
It should be stressed that the increase in abuse cases must be seen in a broader context.

The OECD, for example, "has found measures of child welfare in Japan to be way ahead of the United States, in areas like material well-being, education, housing and environment, and health and safety".^[5]

So, in general, children are well-taken care of in Japan.

It should also be noted that some child-consultation officials now believe that their approach to investigation may be causing more harm than good.^[7]

The Japan Times reported: "In most cases when officials visit a home, they find little or no hint of trouble and no signs of child abuse. Parents often are shocked that they had been suspected of abuse, with some even bursting into tears or abruptly cutting ties with neighbours".

This prompted one official to say: "Let's tell [the parents] that we want to help, and that we're not here to judge."


REFERENCES
========
[1] Waking up to child abuse, The Japan Times, (Sept 13, 2014)

[2] Japan sees alarming rise in child abuse, CNN, (Feb 15, 2011)

[3] Child abuse rate at a record high, The Japan Times, (Sept 26, 2015)

[4] Japan admitting, and fighting, child abuse, The New York Times, (Aug 15, 1999)

[5] Record child abuse where you'd least expect it, OZY, (June 8, 2015)

[6] Child abuse in Japan: Current problems and future perspectives, Makiko Okuyama, Japan Medical Association Journal, (Nov/Dec 2006)

[7] Child consultations centres to be spared routine cases, to focus on serious abuse, The Japan Times, (Nov 30, 2015)