By YUKI KAWANO/ Staff Writer
March 26, 2025 at 15:20 JST
The entrance of the government's Children and Families Agency (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
Child guidance centers nationwide logged the highest number of consultations about child abuse on record in fiscal 2023, the government announced on March 25.
“We are seeing an increase in consultations about psychological abuse. One of the factors is the increase in domestic violence in front of children, such as witnessing violence inflicted against one parent,” Junko Mihara, minister for policies related to children, told reporters the same day. “We want to work hard to protect children and parents who are suffering.”
Those seeking help due to psychological abuse accounted for 59.8 percent of the record 225,509 consultations with 134,948 cases in fiscal 2023.
This was followed by 51,623 cases addressing physical abuse at 22.9 percent.
Consultations over “neglect or refusal to take care of children” numbered 36,465 at 16.2 percent, and those addressing sexual abuse comprised 1.1 percent with 2,473 cases.
The individual most reported as the aggressor was the biological mother at 48.7 percent and biological father at 42.3 percent.
The record in fiscal 2023 was an increase of 10,666 cases, or 5 percent, compared to the previous fiscal year. However, this came after the government lowered fiscal 2022's official total last September.
The revision was made after finding instances where municipal governments did not follow national reporting guidelines when filling out the submission form, such as including consultations determined to be “not abuse” in their case numbers.
The government will consider revising the numbers for fiscal 2021 and earlier years after investigating whether municipal governments still have relevant documents on file in June.
The Children and Families Agency intends to continue attempting to strengthen the welfare consultation system, including expanding child and family centers nationwide to serve as a municipality's backbone for child-rearing support.
Increasing the number of child welfare officers at child guidance centers with an emphasis on job retention is also part of its plan.
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