A study group of government officials and scholars is preparing a report that calls for establishing a legal provision to restrict parental rights as a way to curb child abuses, sources said Wednesday.
The group is proposing a provision under the Child Welfare Act, given repeated cases in which parents forcibly retrieved children who had been placed in institutions because they had been abused.
Under the envisaged provision, people in charge of orphanages and other institutions to which children are placed would have authority that outweighed "parental rights" as defined under the Civil Code, the sources said.
The group also cited the need to revise the Civil Code to enable temporary suspension of parental rights, with a view to protecting children under the care of grandparents or other people, they said.
The study group on parental rights for preventing child abuse was set up in May, comprising officials from the Justice and welfare ministries, the Supreme Court, scholars, lawyers and child welfare experts.
The group is expected to compile the report in January. In February, the Justice and welfare ministries plan to start examining the report at their respective advisory councils for proposing legal changes in the 2011 Diet session.
Under the current legal framework, if a report of child abuse is filed, a child welfare center is empowered to ask a family court to void parental rights or seek an injunction to suspend parental rights until an abuse is confirmed.
But depriving parents of their rights indefinitely would have substantial influence on their future relations with their offspring, and the family court sometimes takes considerable time to reach a decision. Experts have been calling for a legal framework for curbing flexibly on parental rights.