Former employee at Hyogo facility for the disabled sentenced to prison over abusing resident on a daily basis

By Barrier Free Japan with extracts from Sun TV via Yahoo! Japan

June 30 2021

KOBE – The Amagasaki Branch of the Kobe District Court has sentenced a former employee of a facility for the disabled in Nishinomiya City to two years and four months in prison on charges of assault and battery for abusing a resident.

A former employee of the Nishinomiya Sunago Medical Welfare Center, a support facility for the disabled in Nishinomiya City, 33, was charged with injury and assault for repeatedly abusing five severely disabled residents by kicking them and slamming their faces on the floor between June and July 2020.

At the trial, the man admitted to the charges, and the prosecutors demanded three years and six months in prison for “trampling on the character and dignity of the victims.

In his ruling, Judge Shinya Sagawa of the Amagasaki Branch of the Kobe District Court pointed out that “this was a despicable act of abuse against a disabled person who was unable to resist, avoid, or report the damage. He sentenced the man to two years and four months in prison, saying, “The habitual nature of the assaults, including 27 assaults in 14 days, is remarkable.”