A woman with a mild intellectual disability who worked at a welfare workshop in Tokyo has accused the facility’s director of sexually assaulting her, including forcing her to strip naked and touching her genitals. The case highlights the difficulty of preventing abuse of people with disabilities, who may struggle to recognize what happened as assault or to be believed when they speak up.
A 43-year-old care worker at a facility for people with disabilities in Higashiomi, Shiga Prefecture, has been arrested for indecent assault and is suspected of abusing 15 residents in total, the facility’s operator said Thursday. According to the social welfare corporation Gamounokai, which runs the Akane support facility, the worker admitted to acts including pinching, headbutting, and hiding stuffed toys from residents between April last year and August this year, saying he “couldn’t control [his] irritation.” All additional victims were men with disabilities, though no injuries were reported. The corporation has apologized to residents and families, and pledged measures such as stricter staff supervision and the installation of monitoring cameras to prevent further abuse.
A Fukuoka court has sentenced a 60-year-old former group home worker to two years in prison, suspended for four years, for committing an indecent act against a 38-year-old woman with a severe intellectual disability. According to the ruling, Kenji Takada kissed the woman on the lips three times at the facility’s office in April, taking advantage of her inability to form an intention not to consent. In delivering the verdict on October 27, Judge Yasuhiro Okamoto of the Fukuoka District Court said the defendant had abused his position in a “malicious” crime and that his criminal responsibility was “not light.”
A 43-year-old care worker at a facility for people with disabilities in Higashiomi, Shiga Prefecture, has been arrested for indecent assault and is suspected of abusing 15 residents in total, the facility’s operator said Thursday. According to the social welfare corporation Gamounokai, which runs the Akane support facility, the worker admitted to acts including pinching, headbutting, and hiding stuffed toys from residents between April last year and August this year, saying he “couldn’t control [his] irritation.” All additional victims were men with disabilities, though no injuries were reported. The corporation has apologized to residents and families, and pledged measures such as stricter staff supervision and the installation of monitoring cameras to prevent further abuse.
Around 6:30 a.m. on Dec. 12, 2018, Minoru Eguchi and his wife Tomiko were busy preparing breakfast for residents of the nursing facility they were running in the city of Toyama in central Japan when four men suddenly entered. They placed Minoru in a wrestling hold and began dragging him outside. He screamed for his wife to call police. The men forced Minoru, who was in his late 70s, into a private ambulance and drove off. To his horror, Minoru was being forcibly institutionalized, a procedure applied to tens of thousands of Japanese in a complex system that critics say is rife with abuse and lacking independent oversight.
In two separate incidents in Japan, vulnerable residents of care facilities tragically lost their lives under disturbing circumstances. In Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, a 38-year-old woman with disabilities died in December 2022 after suffering severe burns from overly hot bathwater during staff-assisted bathing. Three employees of the Hitakami-en facility have been referred to prosecutors for professional negligence resulting in death, as the water temperature was found to be dangerously high. Meanwhile, in Tsurugashima, Saitama Prefecture, two elderly women were found dead on October 15, hours after being discovered bleeding and unconscious in their care facility.
The Mie prefectural government plans to create what it says will be Japan’s first ordinance with a penalty aimed at deterring customers from behaving abusively to workers.The ordinance would define customer abuse as excessive nuisances that go beyond social norms and harm employees’ working environment. Vicious behavior, such as shouting to demand an apology, would be classified as designated customer abuse. When a business files a complaint of customer abuse, the prefectural government will ask a panel including lawyers to investigate and seek opinions. The perpetrator will be fined if the order is not observed. The fine is likely to be about 500,000 yen.
The Mie prefectural government plans to create what it says will be Japan’s first ordinance with a penalty aimed at deterring customers from behaving abusively to workers.The ordinance would define customer abuse as excessive nuisances that go beyond social norms and harm employees’ working environment. Vicious behavior, such as shouting to demand an apology, would be classified as designated customer abuse. When a business files a complaint of customer abuse, the prefectural government will ask a panel including lawyers to investigate and seek opinions. The perpetrator will be fined if the order is not observed. The fine is likely to be about 500,000 yen.
Japanese elementary school teacher Fumiya Kosemura pleaded guilty to charges of sharing child pornography via social media, in the first hearing on his case at Nagoya District Court on Wednesday. The charges are “correct, and I’m very sorry,” said Kosemura, 37, a teacher at a public elementary school in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, who has been indicted for voyeurism and indecent assault. According to the indictment, Kosemura filmed secretly the underwear of a 7-year-old girl at a facility in Kanagawa and shared the video data within the group between January and February this year.
Tokyo police have arrested four people on suspicion of robbing and abusing a man in his 40s with a mild intellectual disability after forcing him to drink large amounts of whisky, the Metropolitan Police Department said Sept. 26. The suspects — a 22-year-old company worker from Shizuoka Prefecture, a 24-year-old woman from Tokyo, a 21-year-old university student from Hokkaido, and a 19-year-old male restaurant worker — allegedly met the victim through social media and conspired to exploit his condition. Police said the four made the man drink over 700 milliliters of whisky in Tokyo’s Nakano Ward in June, stole his smartphone and used about 100,000 yen in electronic money. They also filmed the incident, which included acts of sexual humiliation, and later abandoned the victim near his home and again in Shizuoka Prefecture. All four have admitted to the allegations, according to the police.
Barrier Free Japan