TOKYO, June 20 (UPI) -- The number of cases of child abuse in Japan rose to a record high of more than 30,000 last year, the Mainichi Shimbun reported Monday.
City governments' child guidance centers dealt with a record 32,979 cases of child abuse in 2004, an increase of 6,410, or 24 percent, from the previous year, according to the statistics of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.
Ministry officials attribute much of the rapid increase to a revision in the law, which requires the child guidance centers to deal with not just confirmed cases but unconfirmed ones as well.
Another factor was the widely publicized case in January 2004 of a 15-year-old junior high school boy in Osaka prefecture who suffered repeated severe abuse and near starvation at the hands of his father and stepmother. In the wake of the news, the number of confirmed and suspected cases handled by child guidance centers rose sharply.
Child guidance centers across the country have demanded an additional 189 counselors to cope with the sharp rise in the number of child abuse cases.
