Japan Child Centers, Police Enhancing Abuse Info Sharing

October 22, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese public child consultation centers and police are stepping up efforts to share information about suspected child abuse cases after a spate of serious cases, a Jiji Press survey has found.

Child consultation centers share information about all suspected abuse cases reported to the centers with local police in eight of Japan's 47 prefectures, including Kochi and Oita.

The remaining six--Ibaraki, Gunma, Saitama, Gifu, Aichi and Osaka--started such across-the-board information sharing this year, according to the survey conducted between late August and mid-September.

The recent serious cases included one in which a five-year-old girl died in Tokyo's Meguro Ward in March after moving from Kagawa Prefecture. Her case made headlines as she was found to have left desperate messages in a notebook.

Following this case, the central government in July drew up a package of emergency measures. The package calls for close information sharing between police and child consultation centers on suspected serious abuse, such as cases that have resulted in injury as well as possible neglect and sexual abuse cases.

But the package does not require information sharing for all suspected cases between police and child consultation centers, as there is a cautious view on the idea.

A local government that responded to the survey said, "Double checks with police help reduce oversights and prevent cases from developing into serious ones."

In Aichi Prefecture, a report of suspected abuse from a person on the street was relayed to police. Information in the report, including a car license number, helped identify the family that the person reported about.

"It wasn't a dangerous case, but we were able to confirm the safety of the child quickly in cooperation with the police," a prefectural government official said.

Minor cases may later develop into serious ones that involve violence, and if police have information on specific cases, they can act quickly if any of the cases turns serious, an Oita prefectural government official said.

Meanwhile, some local governments said information sharing for all suspected cases may lead to insufficient response to serious cases, particularly in municipalities with many abuse cases.

The city of Saitama, which handled 2,656 child abuse cases in fiscal 2017, sees the need to establish an appropriate way to share information with police, an official said.

Jiji Press conducted the survey on 69 local governments, namely all prefectures and government ordinance-designated big cities, as well as the remaining major cities with public child consultation centers. Jiji Press