Tokyo Disability Facility Worker Says She Was Fired After Reporting Abuse

Extract from 47 News via News.jp

February 14 2026

TOKYO – Yoshimi Kurita (pseudonym), who lives in Tokyo, began working in 2019 as a support staff member at a workshop for people with disabilities. Before long, she witnessed and heard about other staff members physically assaulting and verbally abusing service users.

The abuse was not limited to ordinary staff. A male executive (at the time) of the social welfare corporation that operated the facility repeatedly grabbed the groin of male users with intellectual disabilities when they did not obey him, saying things such as, “Enough already.”

“I reported the abuse many times to the corporation’s executives, but they turned a blind eye,” Kurita said.

She also reported the matter to city hall, but the official in charge would not accept her complaint. On the contrary, it appears that the official informed the corporation that Kurita had made the report.

Driven to the brink, Kurita showed a photograph of a service user who had suffered facial injuries to the family of another user, telling them that abuse was taking place. The social welfare corporation then dismissed her in a disciplinary firing, claiming that showing the user’s face without permission constituted an invasion of privacy.