In the wake of the death of a 10-year-old girl in Noda, Chiba Prefecture last month allegedly due to abuse by her parents, the government held a meeting of relevant Cabinet ministers to adopt a set of emergency measures to crack down on child abuse. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered efforts to confirm the safety of children in all suspected abuse cases within a month. He reportedly urged the relevant parties to place the children under protective custody without hesitation if their parents reject intervention by child welfare authorities, calling such a response a sign that abuse is likely taking place.
Such actions are indeed long overdue and should have been enforced much sooner. As in many other cases of child abuse that resulted in the victims' deaths, the authorities that responded to the case of Mia Kurihara, including the local child welfare center and the board of education, underestimated the danger the girl was in despite their strong suspicion that she was suffering violence at the hands of her father.
The child welfare center placed Mia under protective custody in late 2017 after she told her school that she was being beaten by her father at home, and then placed her in the care of a relative. When the father later protested the move in a meeting with officials of the welfare center and demanded that his daughter be returned home, he produced a letter — which he said was written by the girl — saying that she had been lying about the father's violence and that she wanted to go home. Officials of the center said they suspected that the girl had been ordered by the father to write the letter — as was later found out to be the case — but they decided to send the girl back to her parents' home anyway. After the girl's death, the officials noted that the very fact that the father had the girl write such a letter "should have been considered a form of abuse."