Parents Indicted over Death of Abused Girl in Tokyo

June 28, 2018

Tokyo- Public prosecutors indicted the parents of a five-year-old girl on Wednesday for alleged neglect that resulted in her death at an apartment in Tokyo's Meguro Ward in March.

The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office indicted Yudai Funato, the 33-year-old stepfather of the girl, Yua, and her mother, Yuri, 26, for allegedly failing to provide the girl with necessary medical care.

According to the indictment, the girl had suffered malnutrition since late January while being abused by her parents. She died of septic fever on March 2 after the parents failed to take her to hospital.

The Metropolitan Police Department arrested the parents earlier this month on suspicion of neglect resulting in the death of the girl.

The stepfather was initially arrested on March 3 on suspicion of assault for allegedly punching the girl.

The girl was found to have left desperate messages in a notebook seized by the police from the apartment.

"I will try to do better tomorrow than today," she wrote in the notebook. "Please forgive me, forgive me," the note said.

Her weight was about 12 kilograms when she died, far below the average weight of 20 kilograms for five-year-olds.

She was given only bananas to eat in the days leading up to her death, investigative sources told Jiji Press.

She was unable to speak when she was taken to hospital, the sources said.

Since the family moved to Tokyo from Kagawa Prefecture, western Japan, in late January, the girl had slept in a separate bedroom to her parents and younger brother, the sources said. Jiji Press