Lack of Communication Blamed for Tokyo Child Abuse Death

October 3, 2018

Tokyo- A Japanese government panel on Wednesday pointed to lack of communication between child consultation centers as a key problem in a high-profile child abuse case in which a five-year-old girl died.

A Tokyo consultation center failed to recognize the urgency of the case because it did not receive necessary information from a Kagawa Prefecture center when her family moved to the capital from the western Japan prefecture in January, said the expert panel of the welfare ministry's Social Security Council.

In order to prevent any recurrence of such cases, child consultation centers should utilize an abuse risk check sheet that makes it easy to communicate the urgency of specific cases and other related information, the panel said in a report.

This is the first time that the expert panel has directly examined a single case of death from child abuse before local governments report their own investigation findings.

The death of Yua Funato in Tokyo's Meguro Ward in March made headlines mainly because she left desperate messages in a notebook found in the Tokyo apartment where she lived with her mother and stepfather. Before moving to Tokyo, the girl was taken into protective care twice by the Kagawa center.

Both the Tokyo metropolitan and Kagawa prefectural governments are conducting their own investigations.

Meanwhile, the panel focused on problems across the local governments, checking documents and conducting interviews.

The report said the family submitted a notification of moving on Jan. 17. The Kagawa consultation center communicated with the Tokyo center on Jan. 29-31, sending a large amount of documents and giving spoken reports on the case.

But the Kagawa center failed to produce a risk assessment check sheet as required under the welfare ministry's guidelines on the management of child consultation centers and the treatment of child abuse cases.

The center therefore did not provide information that would have been available from the check sheet, such as the characteristics of the girl's case and abuse risk assessments.

The center did not send photographs of her injuries or provide sufficient explanations during spoken contacts with the Tokyo center, according to the report.

The report also said the two centers failed to share the same level of risk recognition, because their officials did not meet directly to discuss the urgency of the case, the characteristics of the family and other matters that are hard to communicate over the telephone or via documents.

On Jan. 4, the Kagawa center ended a measure to force the parents to take guidance from a child welfare worker while allowing the girl to stay at home, before the family moved out of the prefecture.

The panel said the termination of the measure was a reason for the Tokyo center to judge that the case was not urgent. It added that such a measure should not be lifted before the transfer of a specific abuse case is completed. Jiji Press