Number of Japan child abuse cases soar

The number of cases of child abuse reported in Japan soared nearly a quarter in the year that ended on March 31, rising above 30,000 for the first time, the Health Ministry said on Monday.

Stricter laws on reporting abuse contributed to the rise, but the main factor was several notorious cases in which children died as a result of abuse by their parents, horrifying a nation that has boasted that its stable family structure made such abuse inconceivable.

The ministry said the number of cases reported to child guidance centres around the country jumped to 32,979 in the year ended in March, up about 6,400 from the year before.

A new law passed last October, which makes it mandatory to report children who have bruises, severe weight loss or other signs of abuse, helped drive the rise, a ministry official said. Previous laws mandated reporting of only abuse that was witnessed.

“But the real increase was due to increased attention to the issue after some cases were reported in the media, since it seemed in those instances that not enough had been done,” the official said.

“Basically, it’s not that there was no abuse in the past, just that people now are much more aware of it,” he said.

Experts say similar apparent rises in child abuse were seen in Europe and the United States when authorities there started to recognise the problem 20 to 30 years ago. Recent U.S. figures estimate that some 3 million children are abused each year.

Most cases of abuse in Japan involve violence or neglect, with two-thirds committed by the mother.

Japan’s government belatedly began to deal with the issue in 2000 by passing laws requiring abuse to be reported, spurred by news coverage of a wave of cases as well as pressure from volunteer groups.

Before that, children had been treated largely as their parents’ property, barely recognised as individuals in a nation where domestic problems were traditionally left to the households involved and violence against children was justified as “discipline”.

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