A 24-year-old woman has been sentenced to three years in prison for parental neglect resulting in the starvation death of her 10-month-old daughter.
The Chiba District Court on Thursday convicted Risa Konishi of not feeding her daughter Suzuka enough while they lived in an apartment in Ichihara, Chiba Prefecture, from Jan 3 to 25, 2020, Fuji TV reported. She was also charged with failing to provide Suzuka with medical treatment.
During the trial, the court heard that Konishi’s husband, who had separated from his wife, placed an emergency call on Jan 25, 2020, and said: “My wife messaged me to say our child isn’t breathing.”
When paramedics arrived at the apartment, Suzuka was in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest. She was taken to hospital where she was confirmed dead. Although Suzuka had no visible signs of trauma on her body, doctors later determined that she had died from malnutrition and dehydration.
Konishi at the time was also living with her eldest daughter, 5, eldest son, 3. The two other children did not have any issues regarding their physical health.
Konishi has a history of psychiatric treatment and was admitted to a health care facility in Chiba Prefecture immediately after the incident. She was arrested after her discharge from the medical institution.
© Japan Today
26 Comments
Login to comment
starpunk
That's right now. A slap on the wrist.
An unspeakable hideous crime.
CelineDzebra
Absolutely horrible. A mother is a beacon of love and care. How can she do this?
Mark
RIP little one, and forgive us for NOT even having the empathy to understand what you been thru.
Mark
3 years!? Is this what a humans life is worth these days, this is how we encourage others to neglect and abuse our children, if anything this sentence defeats the purpose of even having a trial.
Aly Rustom
this is truly heartbreaking. The kind of story you read about that will ruin your day
Michael Machida
Three years in jail for killing a baby. Justice?
Wolfpack
Women always get more lenient treatment for their crimes - even for ones as heinous as this. I don’t understand why that is but it’s like that all over in first world countries. Women will never be fully equal until they get equally harsh treatment as men when they commit such atrocities. It takes an especially deviant person to literally torture a very young child by starving them to death.
ReasonandWisdomNippon
This is a problem with Equality when it comes to punishment.
If it was a Man doing the same crime 20 years easy.
Women get less time in general.
Less punishment.
Less prison time.
Treated better once in jail.
smithinjapan
You see? told you. I said two years, and I was only slightly off, because that is what the life of a child is worth here. But, you swerve in front of a car on your bicycle to disrupt traffic? Steal ten yen from a shrine donation box? You get more than this sick, twisted excuse of a human being.
Jim
This is just sad on so many levels! The social service department in Japan is pathetic and useless!
snowymountainhell
Fathers, when in the home *@purple_depressed_bacon 8:18pm, ***do get charged, from time to time. Case in point, similar story from a few years back**:
https://japantoday.com/category/crime/parents-arrested-after-8-month-old-baby-dies-of-suspected-malnutrition-neglect
snowymountainhell
Thanks for the additional, possibly related info @Yubara 6:56pm. All prior articles are “no longer available” and search results are non-existent:
Wish media would leave the progressive stories up until the final verdict is reached in these “Crime” cases.
purple_depressed_bacon
3 years for starving her own baby to death? The Japanese justice system is a colossal joke. This woman should get life and half a meal every other day so she knows the agony her child went through. The husband should also be held accountable for leaving the mother to deal with 3 kids under the age of 10.
Johansawada
what a monster!!! 3years is not enough... she also should not be allowed to be any where near her other 2 kids for the rest of her life!
Yasuragi
Three years from now she'll be released and get custody of the survivors. Just you wait and see. :(
Yubaru
One other thing, if I remember this case correctly weren't her older children from a different marriage and the poor baby who died was from her remarriage to her current separated husband?
Garigarikun
WTF. Punishment should be 10 months with same rations she was giving her little girl. The other two kids were probably eating healthy at school while the baby suffered at home with a mom definitely not capable of providing for her children.
Yubaru
And why didnt her separated husband do something about it his child? He had to have known something was wrong
Yubaru
I hope they only feed her every month or so for the next 3 years! Just to give her a tiny idea of what her daughter went through.
Yokota
Sad story for the little girl.
TokyoJoe
Disgusting, cruel, child killing Japanese mother. 3 years?, Should be life without parole.
Mr Kipling
Obviously the social services and her family thought she was OK to look after her kids.
Obviously they were wrong.
snowymountainhell
Is this is enough prison time for a mother neglecting her infant that starved death? The two other, older children were not dehydrated, malnourished nor abused. Obviously some very serious postpartum issues on top of some much deeper mental health issues that were definitely NOT resolved prior to her release from the psychiatric institution. What’s left of this family will forever be in crisis. When her jail time is up, she will need to consistently monitored and evaluated to keep the other children safe. Sad for them.
Scorpion
If this was a foreign male he wod get 20+ years...
PharaohChromium
3 years ain't enough