Tokyo, May 12 (IANS): More than 900 incidents of children being mistreated at nurseries across Japan between April and December of 2022 were reported, according to a government survey released Friday.
According to the survey by the Children and Families Agency, 90 of those cases were assessed as abuse.
The survey involving local governments was conducted following the high-profile case in December last year resulting in the arrest of three nursery school teachers in Shizuoka Prefecture for allegedly physically and verbally abusing infants in their care repeatedly.
Among the allegations, the teachers were found to have held one-year-old in their care upside down in the air by their feet and threatened them with a knife, among other abusive acts, Xinhua news agency reported.
The multiple cases of abuse at the nursery school may have come to light earlier, but the school made all of its staff sign a pledge to keep silent on the matter, local reports said.
The case in Shizuoka led to the uncovering of similar cases of mistreatment and abuse of nursery school-aged children in Japan.
As a measure to standardise cases considered abuse, the government produced a new criterion, as previously, each childcare facility had its own judgment of what constituted abuse.
According to the poll by the Children and Families Agency, nationwide municipalities and prefectures were asked if they had received reports from nurseries about incidents of infants being mistreated or abused by their teachers.
Of the 1,492 cases in which those asked investigated such cases, 914 confirmed incidents of children being mistreated, with 90 of these considered to be cases of child abuse with children being physically hurt.
The survey revealed a mere 9.5 per cent of the municipal governments reported cases of child mistreatment to the prefectural governments, with 27.8 per cent of cases regarding abuse reported.
In a separate nationwide poll conducted by the agency, showing a huge disparity in what constitutes child mistreatment, 73 per cent of childcare facilities said there had been zero cases of children being mistreated.