Child abuse, pornography
149… is the number of child-abuse cases reported or detected by the Japanese police in the first half of 2007, a surge of 24.2% compared to 2006 and a record hight since police started collecting such data in 2000. Among these cases, 27 were sexual abuse and 10 were a lack of care in the upbringing of the kids . What is even more worrisome is the fact that 32 of the victims were aged 1 year or under. It is also to note that 93 of the offenders were biological parents.
As for child pornography, which was also included in the bi-annual report, the Mainichi cites:
“Police said that 718 child prostitution cases were reported during the period. The number of child victims in these cases totaled 651. Two of the children were elementary school students, 210 were junior high school students and 265 were high school students.”
“In 129 of the cases, children were photographed naked. In 68 of these cases, the children were lured though messages on Internet bulletin boards or similar means.”
This is what you get when you grow lenient with the production and the circulation of U-15 idols DVDs and photobooks!
(via Mainichi and Japan today)
Poor Mari….she’s my favorite. If I ever become a j-pop singer and part of the...
I think it’s unfair to assume watching U-15 idol DVDs has a causal effect towards child prostitution just as it’s unfair to assume playing violent video games has a causal effect towards school shootings.
August 13th, 2007 at 2:34 amI don’t mean to undermine these stats and the awful truths of child abuse and the like, but is this 149 in the entire country of Japan, or just in Tokyo..? With a population of 12 million just in Tokyo, and about 120 million give or take in Japan, either way, 149 is crazy low… Do I understand these stats right? In California with a population of about 37 million there were 450,000 child abuse cases reported last year alone.
August 13th, 2007 at 4:10 amSupercoomachu, that’s almost 10,000 times the number of cases per capita, which quite clearly demonstrates that the lack of “U-15 idols DVDs and photobooks” causes widespread child abuse. In name of protecting California’s children the government should mandate the openening of chikan pubs and encourage the promotion of early teen idolatry.
If Kaishin doesn’t need causal effect, neither do I.
August 13th, 2007 at 4:45 pmThe statistical number of child abuse is considered to be a surface of the iceberg above water. Because the public child consultation center(and the police) is not functioning well enough, there must be many cases which haven’t been reported nor counted as child abuse.
Compared to the US, people in Japan are insensitive about the problem of child abuse and child pornography, therefore many cases would be overlooked. Even though, I assume the number of actual child abuse cases in Japan should be much lower that the ones in the US. (Japan’s crime rate is generally the lowest among advanced countries.)
August 14th, 2007 at 4:15 pm