Man 'misused baby hatch to grab inheritance'

The Yomiuri Shimbun

A 49-year-old man has been charged with pocketing about 60 million yen in insurance money paid to his orphaned nephew, for whom he had been named a legal guardian prior to leaving the infant at a "baby hatch" facility in Kumamoto in 2007.

The man is suspected of having embezzled the money from the boy, whose mother had died in a traffic accident. The Saitama prefectural police have sent papers on the case to prosecutors, investigative sources said.

The man, who is currently living in the Kanto region, is believed to have abused the baby hatch to illegally obtain financial gains, according to observers.

Jikei Hospital set up the baby hatch in May 2007, allowing parents to anonymously leave their babies if they feel they cannot care for them because of poverty or other reasons.

The man was a guardian for the infant prior to leaving the boy at the hatch, at which point the man collected insurance benefits and other money left for the boy by his mother and spent the money gambling while drifting across the nation, the man reportedly told the police.

When he left the boy at the hatch, the man included a note under an assumed name, apparently in an effort to conceal his identity as the guardian, it was learned Tuesday.

According to investigators, after the mother's death, the boy was left alone, and a court appointed the man--the woman's older brother--as the boy's guardian, ordering him to look after the boy's inheritance.

However, in spring 2007, the man withdrew the mother's life and accident insurance payments that had been deposited into several bank accounts opened in the boy's name. He then left the boy at the Kumamoto hatch and went missing.

Unable to contact the man, the court dismissed him as guardian of the boy. A lawyer who took over the guardianship then consulted with the Saitama prefectural police as to the man's whereabouts.

In early May, the boy's uncle turned himself in at a police station in Aichi Prefecture, lugging a large amount of baggage.

The Saitama police then questioned the man, who reportedly said: "I found out about the baby hatch and left the boy there. Since then, I wandered around and gambled the insurance money on motorboat races and other things hoping to earn more money.

"I started feeling guilty about what I'd done after seeing people [in the Tohoku region] suffering from the Great East Japan Earthquake," he reportedly told the police.

The Saitama prefectural police made an inquiry into the man's story by asking Jikei Hospital about the circumstances under which the boy was brought to the hatch. They also did DNA tests on the man and the boy to confirm that they were related.

The police then sent a letter to the district public prosecutors office on Friday requesting "an appropriate" criminal punishment for the uncle.

The police, meanwhile, decided not to pursue the case on suspicion of negligence by a guardian, given that the boy's health condition was better at the hatch and that he had been left in a safer place.

The uncle of the boy told The Yomiuri Shimbun on Monday, "Leaving the boy at the hatch isn't illegal, because the facility is approved by the health ministry."

Since the opening of the baby hatch facility in 2007, the Kumamoto municipal government has held a special meeting once every three months inviting lawyers and doctors to discuss the hatch.

"We need to discuss whether the latest incident occurred simply because there was such a service as the baby hatch," said an official of the facility.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry had taken a stance that opening up a baby hatch to accept abandoned newborns "cannot be considered illegal."

"The latest incident is a rare example [of misusing the hatch]. I don't think this case should be connected to the debate over whether such a facility should exist," said Toshiyuki Takahashi, of the ministry's Family Welfare Division.

At the same time, the ministry is calling into question the anonymity permitted to parents who leave their babies at the hatch, insisting parents take more responsibility in the rearing of their child.

"We want parents to thoroughly consult with child consultation centers [before using the facility]," he said.