When handing down an eight-year prison sentence for the mother of a 5-year-old girl in Tokyo who died last year as a result of abuse by her parents, the Tokyo District Court recognized that the accused herself had suffered from psychological abuse by her husband, but this did not relieve her of the parental responsibility to protect her daughter.
In a case that renewed public awareness of the growing problem of child abuse and prompted the government to take a series of actions on the issue, Yua Funato died in her home in Meguro Ward in March 2018 after being subjected to repeated violence by her father and denied sufficient food for weeks. She weighed only 12 kg when she died — 6 kg less than the average for a girl her age — after losing 4 kg in her final two months, during which she was mostly confined to their home.
The victim's mother, Yuri Funato, rejected intervention by local child welfare officials and failed to take her daughter to a hospital even after the girl's health had deteriorated to a dangerous level, reportedly out of fear that the abuse by her husband would be revealed.