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National / Crime & Legal
Father arrested in Chiba on assault charge after death of daughter, 10, who had told school of 'bullying' by dad
Kyodo
- Jan 29, 2019
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CHIBA - Police have arrested a man on suspicion of assault after his 10-year-old daughter died last week at their home in Chiba Prefecture.
Yuichiro Kurihara, 41, was arrested Friday on suspicion of assaulting his daughter Mia, whose body was found with several bruises on it.
The girl had reported to her school in November 2017 that she had been “bullied” by her father and was taken into protective custody for about seven weeks after a bruise was found on her cheek.
Her 31-year-old mother, whose name has not been released, has told investigators her husband did not stop his abusive behavior despite her pleas, investigative sources said Tuesday.
Mia was found dead in the bathroom of the family’s home in the city of Noda after the police received an emergency call from Kurihara late Thursday night, in which he said his daughter had fallen unconscious and was not breathing following a scuffle between them.
Kurihara reportedly told the police he had made Mia stand for a period of time from earlier that morning and had later got into the scuffle with her while scolding her. He said he had drenched her with cold water from the shower and had grabbed her by the neck.
The police said Monday that the autopsy on Mia revealed no major injuries or diseases and had failed to identify the cause of death. She had not suffered from malnutrition.
Mia, who lived with her parents and 1-year-old sister, had been absent from school since Jan. 7, the first day of class this year, according to Noda’s education board. Kurihara had told the school that Mia was staying in Okinawa Prefecture with her mother.
In 2017, Mia had told officials from a prefectural child welfare center that she had been hit by her father when her mother was away and had been scolded for not doing her homework, the center said.
The center said at a news conference Monday that neither its officials nor her school staff had visited Mia’s home after her period of protective custody ended as they believed she did not face imminent danger.
“The decision to let her return home (from the center) was reasonable but our handling of the case after that was insufficient,” said Hitoshi Nihei, head of the center in Chiba’s city of Kashiwa.
Nihei said the center had determined that the abuse had not been severe and its basic policy after ending protective custody was “watching over her at school.”
The local police and the Noda Municipal Government had shared information on Mia, but the police also said they did not think her case required an immediate response.
The girl’s death comes at a time when the government has pledged to improve measures to prevent child abuse following the death of 5-year-old Yua Funato in Tokyo in March last year. Funato had written “forgive me” in a notebook, begging her parents to stop mistreating her.
Insufficient information sharing among public entities was seen as one of the factors behind the high-profile abuse case.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2...eath-sources-cite-mother-saying/#.XGA99YVoSKk
Father in Chiba case deprived girl of sleep leading up to her death, sources cite mother as saying
Kyodo
- Feb 7, 2019
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CHIBA - A 10-year-old girl who was found dead at her home in Chiba Prefecture last month had been deprived of sleep by her father in addition to being underfed and confined at home by her parents, investigative sources said.
Mia Kurihara’s mother, Nagisa, 31, has told investigators there were times Mia’s father, Yuichiro, 41, woke the girl up to make her stand and that he prevented her from sleeping from around Jan. 22, two days before she was found dead with bruising to her body in the bathroom of their home in Noda, Chiba Prefecture, the sources said.
The father was arrested on Jan. 25 for allegedly assaulting Mia the previous day, including dousing her with cold water from a shower. Mia’s mother was arrested Monday for her alleged failure in stopping the assault.
An autopsy was unable to determine the cause of Mia’s death, but it revealed she had almost no food in her stomach, indicating she had not been fed sufficiently. Investigators are examining the body further.
The mother has told investigators there were times she did not give food to her daughter in the days before her death and she had not allowed Mia to leave home since the beginning of the year at the insistence of her husband.
Investigators have been informed that the mother may have also been a victim of domestic violence.
Experts say the mother may have been unable to reject the demands from her husband out of fear that the violence could escalate if she refused.
“Victims of domestic violence are put in a closed environment where they cannot escape,” said Emi Yano, a professor of gender law at the University of the Ryukyus. “They cannot reject orders because their minds are controlled by violence. Even if the demands escalate, they will face further violence if they refuse,” she said.
The girl’s father has told investigators he began making her stand from 10 a.m. on Jan. 24 and that he does not believe his action was wrong because he was just “disciplining” her. He is suspected of assaulting Mia from around 10 a.m. to 11:10 p.m. the same day.
The case has highlighted a lack of coordination between authorities and officials have been criticized over a series of missteps that could have prevented Mia’s death.
The city of Itoman in Okinawa Prefecture, where the family resided before moving to Chiba, was told by a relative of the mother in July 2017 that Mia was being threatened by her father and that her mother was subjected to domestic violence. The Kuriharas moved out of the city the following month.
In November 2017, Mia said in a school questionnaire on bullying that she was being hit and bullied by her father. She was sent to a child welfare center in Kashiwa, near Noda, the next day for protection and remained there for seven weeks before being transferred to the home of a relative.
In January last year, the father demanded Mia be returned home when he met with the local education board and her school. The education board handed over a copy of the questionnaire upon his insistence, an action that is thought to have aggravated his abuse of the girl.
He later made Mia, then still residing with a relative, write a letter asking to be returned home and stating that she lied when she wrote about the bullying. The father showed the letter to a welfare center, and the center decided to have her return home two days later.
After returning home last March, the girl told an official of the welfare center that her father had actually made her write the letter.
Another!
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201806070060.html
Abused girl, 5, died begging for parents’ love and their forgiveness
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
June 7, 2018 at 18:35 JST
Yua Funato in an image on her mother’s Facebook page (From Facebook page)
In spite of beatings, a near-starvation diet and gross neglect, Yua Funato kept craving her parents' approval, begging in a notebook to "please, please, please forgive me" and promising to be better behaved.
Yua weighed only 12.2 kilograms when she died in March, about the same as a 2-year-old. The soles of her feet bore traces of frostbite, investigators said.
Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department announced the rearrest June 6 of Yudai Funato, 33, and his 25-year-old wife, Yuri, on suspicion of abandoning their parental responsibility resulting in the girl's death.
Yua was pronounced dead at a hospital March 2 after her father called an ambulance that day.
Police said the couple, residents of Tokyo’s Meguro Ward, had admitted to physically abusing Yua.
Police said the child was not given enough to eat, and suffered from malnutrition. The parents apparently began serving Yua mini portions of food from around late January, after they moved to Tokyo, as punishment for bad behavior.
About a month later, the girl was severely debilitated. But her parents did not seek medical treatment.
“We didn't take her to a hospital because we feared our abuse would be exposed,” police quoted one of them saying.
Yua died of blood poisoning brought on by pneumonia, which was triggered by malnutrition.
Yudai was not Yua's biological father. She was from the mother's former marriage. However, the couple had a 1-year-old son on whom they doted.
Yudai, who is unemployed, was indicted in March for inflicting her injuries. Investigators discovered the girl had bleeding in the brain and bruises around her eyes and on the head. The suspect admitted to punching her with his fist repeatedly.
Police believe he orchestrated the physical abuse, and his wife turned a blind eye.
The abuse began long before the family moved to Tokyo from Zentsuji, Kagawa Prefecture.
The Kagawa prefectural child welfare center took Yua into its temporary care twice, in December 2016 and again the following March 2017.
After the family moved in January, Shinagawa child welfare center workers from the Tokyo metropolitan government visited the family Feb. 9 to check up on Yua. They had been alerted to her case by Kagawa workers.
The Shinagawa child welfare center covers Shinagawa, Meguro and Ota wards.
But the mother said her daughter was not at home.
Yua’s death came as metropolitan and ward government officials were preparing to call a response meeting to address the girl’s plight.
Yua was forced to sleep alone in a separate room while her parents and infant brother slept together, according to investigative sources.
She was left by herself in a room without a heater in winter, while her parents went shopping with her sibling.
Her notebook, written in hiragana and found in their apartment, demonstrated desperate pleas for forgiveness.
“Please, please, please forgive me. I will make sure I can do more things tomorrow than today without daddy and mommy needing to tell me what to do,” said one entry.
"Really, I will never repeat the same things. Forgive me. I will correct what I was unable to do yesterday and what I have done every day," said another.
In a pitiful cry for help and affection, she wrote: "I am sorry that I played so much like a fool. I will stop doing a foolish thing like playing. I will never ever do that. I do promise. "
Yua awoke each day at 4 a.m., having set the alarm herself to give her time to practice hiragana, according to police and other sources. She was ordered to do so by her father.
“The notebook gives an impression that the girl was trying very hard to write neatly,” an investigator said. "Even though she was told to practice hiragana, the only words that came to her mind were those begging her parents for forgiveness as she was severely abused."
Yudai moved to Tokyo last December to find work. Yuri and the children followed the following month, arriving in the capital on Jan. 23.
Around that time, Yudai ordered the girl to lose weight, saying she was plump.
The father weighed her every morning and controlled what she could eat.
Breakfast consisted of only soup.
Lunch was miso soup and a one-third serving of rice.
Dinner was just half a bowl of rice.
Yua sometimes "ate" just once a day.
When she did not follow family rules, Yudai poured water on her or beat her to instill “discipline,” according to investigators.
On Jan. 4, before she moved to Tokyo, Yua weighed 16.6 kg. By the time she died, she had lost 4 kg.
A woman in her 60s who lived in the same neighborhood as the Funatos in Zentsuji recalled that Yua did not look skinny when she lived there.
“I've seen Yua’s mother asking her daughter what she wanted for lunch,” the woman said.
Yua ventured out only once after she moved to Tokyo until her death. That was when her parents introduced themselves to neighbors after they moved in.
Tokyo and Kagawa officials will investigate the case to assess if their responses were appropriate and compile a report on their findings, including measures to stop a recurrence of a similar incident, by the end of March 2019.
***
Timeline of events, based on information obtained from the Tokyo metropolitan government and police, as well as the Kagawa prefectural government
2016
September
Child welfare center workers in Kagawa Prefecture begin making regular visits to the Funatos after reports that Yua was heard crying loudly at her home in Zentsuji.
December
A neighbor finds Yua crouching outdoors. The child welfare center takes her into its temporary care.
2017
February
Kagawa prefectural police refer the case to prosecutors, citing suspicions that Yudai Funato physically abused Yua. The child welfare center releases her.
March
The child welfare center takes Yua in its temporary care for a second time.
May
Kagawa prefectural police again send criminal papers to prosecutors against Yudai for injuries sustained by Yua. But both cases were not prosecuted
July
The child welfare center releases Yua.
2018
January
The Funatos start afresh in Tokyo’s Meguro Ward. The Kagawa prefectural welfare center provides the Shinagawa child welfare center in Tokyo’s Shinagawa Ward with its case files on Yua.
Feb. 9
Shinagawa child welfare center workers visit the Funato home, but are unable to meet with Yua.
March 2
Yudai calls for an ambulance for Yua, who is confirmed dead at a hospital.
March 3
Tokyo police arrest Yudai on suspicion of physically abusing Yua and injuring her.
March 23
Tokyo prosecutors indict Yudai for causing injuries resulting in Yua's death.
