A former employee of the facility was arrested by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department for sexually assaulting a girl with intellectual disabilities who attended a facility in Katsushika-ku, Tokyo, and for taking a picture of the situation with a smartphone.
A camera in the facility shows multiple residents being assaulted, and a survey by Nishinomiya City revealed damage to a total of 10 men and women in their 20s and 50s in about a month. According to the city, the suspect admitted to the abuse and said, “I was busy and stressed by the new coronavirus.”
Examining the images left on the camera for about a month, we found that nine other residents in their 20s and 50s were repeatedly abused by holding their mouths, hitting their limbs and back, and kicking them.
A male employee in his thirties working at a support facility for persons with disabilities in Nishinomiya City has been disciplined and dismissed for repeated abuses such as hitting multiple residents and holding their face against the floor.
A 54-year-old CEO of a facility for people with disabilities has been arrested and charged with hitting a woman who had been admitted to a facility for the disabled in Kuki City, Saitama Prefecture. This was the second time the CEO was arrested after having been once arrested for sexually assaulting the woman at her home in Satte City, Saitama Prefecture in July. The CEO denies some of the accusations.
Kita Ward in Kobe City said that a disabled junior high school student (14) was being abused at a day-service facility in from May to June.
The activities of the residents were greatly restricted to prevent the infection of the new coronavirus, and it appears they were locked up in their living rooms. Aina Yamayurien is managed by the social welfare corporation, ‘Kanagawa Kyokai’, which managed the Tsukui Yamayurien, where 19 former residents were killed four years ago by a former employee, Satoshi Uematsu.
As the COVID-19 crisis continues, the investigation into abuse of people with disabilities at a facility in Kanagawa prefecture is about to be dismissed. New suspicions of abuse emerged last autumn regarding the “Tsukui Yamayurien” facility in Sagamihara City, in Kanagawa Prefecture, which became a stage of mass murder four years ago. The prefecture suddenly announced on May 18 that it would stop verifying cases of abuse, and some are skeptical.
According to the city government , a former male employee abused a child twice in May-July 2019. The male employee retired in August of the same year, but the city said that he was in violation of the obligation to respect persons with disabilities as specified by the Child Welfare Law. The city has not confirmed abuse of other users.
In fiscal year 2018, Wakayama Prefecture dealt with forty-seven reports regarding disability abuse, an increase of ten reports compared to the previous year.
