Eight children who were wounded by a knife-wielding intruder at Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka Prefecture in 2001 will receive a combined 100 million yen in compensation from Osaka Kyoiku University, an affiliate of the elementary school, sources said Thursday.
The university admitted that it failed to provide adequate security when Mamoru Takuma entered the school and murdered eight pupils and wounded other kids and teachers before he was subdued.
The university said It will apologize to the surviving victims and their parents, and sign an agreement with them for the payment, which includes compensation for posttraumatic stress disorder, the sources said.
The university and the families focused on how to put a value on the psychological trauma suffered by the children. Experts say the case could be a model for working out damages in school accidents and incidents.
In the June 2001 stabbing spree, Takuma, 40, murdered eight children and injured 13 other pupils and two teachers. Of the 13, eight suffered serious injuries.
The university set up a psychiatric support team for the children, but more than 10 of them continued suffering from PTSD around November 2003, the university said.
The families of children with serious injuries and psychological trauma urged the university and the central government to apologize and pay between 4.5 million yen to 14 million yen in compensation to each child.
The university and the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry agreed in June 2003 with families of the eight murdered children to pay about 400 million yen in compensation in total.
Takuma was hanged last September.
He was sentenced to death by the Osaka District Court in August 2003 and his defense team filed an appeal. But he withdrew the appeal toward the end of the following month, finalizing the sentence.