Experts Baffled In Japan’s Rising Numbers of Parents Harming Their Children

On the evening of August 30, the police responded to an emergency call and they went to the Osaka home of Kazuya Ogawa. Upon arriving there, they were confronted by a horrifying scene: there was Ogawa’s wife who was found lying on the floor in the bedroom of their two daughters, 5-year-old Risa, and 3-year-old Juri. All of them have sustained serious stab wounds.

The two girls were rushed to hospital but were later pronounced dead. Ogawa’s 40-year-old wife underwent treatment for knife wounds to her abdomen and was reported to be in a stable condition.

There were no signs of forced entry into the house, and nothing was stolen, which led the police to conclude that the mother stabbed her daughters to death and tried to commit suicide after. The question is: why?

In recent years, there has been a growing number of cases in which children were harmed by their own parents or guardians. The killings of Risa and Juri Ogawa, however, were “the first in a series of similar attacks across Japan by middle-aged mothers on their own children,” which leave experts baffled.

“It’s complicated,” admits Fujiko Yamada, who set up the Child Maltreatment Prevention Centre 21 years ago and agrees that the number of cases being dealt with by police appears to be rising inexorably.
[...]
“There are many reasons why we’re seeing more children being hurt, but a big one is domestic violence between couples,” Yamada told the South China Morning Post.
Many women who are victims of physical abuse at the hands of their partner tend to try to shake it off and play down the problem – even when one incident becomes a regular occurrence, Yamada says. Women who are exposed to such violence in the family have a tendency to then become violent with their own children.

Yamada also states other factors which could lead violence against children.

More details over at the South China Morning Post.

(Image Credit: Reuters)


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