Abused children top 30,000 for 1st time in Jan.-June

September 21, 2017

TOKYO- The number of children suspected to have been abused in Japan in January-June topped 30,000 for the first time ever since first-half data started in 2011, the National Policy Agency said Thursday.

Police referred a total of 30,262 suspected abuse victims aged 17 or younger to child consultation centers in the first six months of this year, up 23.5 percent from a year before. The first-half figure increased for the sixth straight year.

The continued rise came as reports to police have been increasing on the back of growing public awareness of the problem of child abuse, NPA officials said.

The number of children who faced psychological abuse, including verbal assaults such as a threat to kill and witnessing domestic violence, stood at 21,406, accounting for some 70 percent of the total. Of them, 13,859, up 19.2 percent from a year earlier, were exposed to violence, mainly between parents.

Physically abused children increased 13.9 percent to 5,723, while 3,036 children, up 12.9 percent, suffered negligence or neglect. By contrast, the number of sexually abused children fell 24.8 percent to 97.

The number of children who were taken into protective custody by police in emergency cases or at night came to 1,787, up by 236, rising for the fifth straight year on a first-half basis.

Police took action on 511 child abuse cases, down by 17 from the record high marked in January-June last year, with the number of children affected decreasing by 18 to 528. Physical abuse cases accounted for 411, followed by 70 sexual abuse cases and 22 cases for psychological abuse.

The number of victimized children came to 519. Of them, 27 died.

In April last year, the NPA issued instructions to prefectural police departments across the country that even for cases for which reporting to child consultation centers is judged unnecessary, they should ask such centers or municipal governments if these had been handled as abuse cases in the past.

In January-June this year, police departments made a total of 9,952 such inquiries, up by some 2,500 from a year before. Jiji Press