60% of child abuse fatalities aged under 1

The Yomiuri Shimbun

About 60 percent of the 67 infants and children who died from abuse in fiscal 2008 were aged less than 1 year old, and 26 of them were less than 1 month old, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Wednesday.

A ministry expert panel said the figures show the nation's child-rearing support systems urgently need to be expanded and reinforced.

Previous ministry surveys showed 30 percent to 50 percent of victims of abuse were aged under 1.

The 67 deaths mark an increase of six from the previous fiscal year. By age bracket, 39 were younger than 1, 21 were aged 1 to 5, three were 6 to 10 and three were 11 or older. One victim's age was not known.

The panel said reasons that babies aged under 1 were fatally abused included:

-- Abusers did not want family members or colleagues at work and school to know a baby had been born.

-- Abusers were incapable of raising a child.

-- Abusers felt extremely stressed from child-rearing.

The panel believes systems in place to prevent child abuse are failing, and suggested that sex education be improved to help prevent unwanted pregnancies and that pregnant women be provided with better, more accessible consultation services.

In one case that made headlines in March, Asuka Takenaka was arrested on suspicion of murdering her 2-month-old daughter in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture.

Takenaka, 24, allegedly damaged the baby's brain by shaking her daughter in a fit of rage when she would not stop crying.

After undergoing psychiatric examination, Takenaka was indicted in July on charges of inflicting injury resulting in death. Takenaka reportedly told investigators she was so exhausted from looking after her daughter that she could not sleep.

Her case underlined the pressures that some single parents go through when raising a child.

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Abuse consultations hit record high

Child consultation centers across the nation handled a record 44,210 child abuse cases--a preliminary figure--in fiscal 2009, an increase of 1,546 over the previous year.

The number of consultations has been steadily increasing since such statistics were first collected in fiscal 1990. The figure for fiscal 2009 is nearly 40 times that of fiscal 1990.

"The obligation to report suspected abuse has become widely known among the public," a ministry official said in explaining the uptrend in consultation cases.

Since April 2008, child consultation centers have been legally empowered to forcibly investigate suspected cases of child abuse. However, only one case was investigated in fiscal 2009, and only two the previous year.