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A 33-year-old woman from Adachi Ward Tokyo, has been sentenced to three years, suspended for five years, for abandoning her newborn child who died after being left in her apartment in December 2019.
The Tokyo District Court on Friday convicted Tomomi Ikeda, a part-time employee, of parental neglect resulting in death after leaving her newborn daughter unattended at home after giving birth on Dec 28, 2019, Sankei Shimbun reported. Ikeda lived alone and gave birth to the girl in the bathroom of her apartment.
She worked continuously until late at night at a bar and pachinko parlor for three days from the day after the child was born. She noticed that the baby was not moving on the night of Jan 1, 2020, and called an ambulance.
The baby, in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest, was taken to hospital where she died on Jan 4. Her weight was 1.36 kilograms.
Ikeda had entered a guilty plea but told the court through her lawyer: “I couldn’t take my child to the hospital because I had no money and no health insurance. I did not have anyone around me who I could confide in.”
Ikeda added that she wishes she could apologize to her daughter.
© Japan Today
17 Comments
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Mark
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.
I really feel for her and the child, hard to accept, and hard to believe at the same time, No health insurance!?? I thought all Japanese are covered, may be I was wrong!? RIP little one, and I hope the mother gets the help needed.
CaptDingleheimer
Doesn't Japan have those sally ports at fire departments where you can 'abandon' a baby you can't take care of, no questions asked?
Mr Kipling
There are obvious mental health issues here, locking the mother up isn't going to bring back the baby or do anything positive.
Gaijinjland
Do Japanese not know about welfare? It's easy to enroll. They will give you a free apartment and a monthly cash stipend. Also healthcare is provided for. Basically free room, money and healthcare. All you have to do is ask.
Yasuragi
1.36 kilograms? That is awfully small. Even if the baby was heavier at birth it was still a couple months premature. How sad.
Jim
Japans law and order at its best!
Ken Holcomb
No money? You had a job, albeit likely not high paying.
Bet you had cell phone, with monthly bills.
No one you could confide in?
How about the baby daddy? Likely another immature loser.
Finally abortion is not illegal in Japan. Some may consider it murder, but what was the final result here?
Suspended sentence? Ok, as long as it's accompanied with mandatory sterilization to prevent you killing another baby in the future.
nonu6976
Suspended sentence for basically murdering your child - only in Japan.
pudus
"Likely another immature loser."
pappy was a rollinstone, hit it and quit it, reads like, not even a emergency tether.
"Likely"
purple_depressed_bacon
Right?! It's absurd how lax the punishments are for these kinds of crimes. They're basically saying, "meh. I don't care about children's lives. Moving on."
Another unfortunate product of the Japanese mentality of keeping things to oneself and not wanting to "bother others with your problems". Now an innocent life has been lost. Horrible.
GW
OMG....what a sad mess, disaster.......33yr old & she gets a suspended sentence......there is no way a man would get away with this kind of neglect......I really hate reading stuff like this, sadly sad stories are all too common & the culture doesnt make it easy for people to seek help, the results as we can see can be horrific....
Khuniri
Bungle writes:
"Then you should have insisted on contraception and if that failed, terminated the pregnancy.
Vile woman."
There are those (I am not one of them!) who argue that women have a right to, uh, "postpartum termination." There are also those, especially in America, who support abortion up until the moment of birth...I would say that such is truly "vile." In a culture in which sex is widely regarded as simply a form of recreation and abortion as a morally neutral means of dealing with "mistakes," it is hardly surprising that infants are left to die. We should pray both for the baby and for the very mixed-up mother!