A male health care worker working at a nursing home for elderly people in Tokyo's Edogawa Ward has been arrested for repeatedly beating an elderly woman resident.
According to police, the suspect, Yosuke Matsuoka, 33, was arrested and charged with assault on Wednesday. TBS quoted police as saying that in April, Matsuoka struck the woman in her 80s across the face, inflicting serious injuries on her.
Police said that the woman was taken to hospital to be treated for head injuries. However, doctors found that some of the woman's internal organs had been ruptured due to blunt force trauma.
Following his arrest, Matsuoka was quoted as saying, "I just snapped. I was stressed out from work and relationships."
Police said that since arriving at the nursing home in February of last year, the elderly woman may have been subject to Matsuoka's assaults several times.
© Japan Today
12 Comments
Login to comment
sillygirl
More mental health care, more time off from long work hours and better pay will go a long way to curb this type of assault.
Puff_the_Magic
This kind of work is not easy. I've done it and you have to be super patient which means you need rest, support, and a loving perspective. Without those, something like this could happen.
MarkG
I don't think so sillygirl. I've heard of abuses and thefts for years here in USA. Japan, maybe, more honor and shame there compared to USA with many have no shame or honor.
Frungy
While Sillygirl and PufftheMagic make valid points that nursing is hard work, stressful and underpaid I must disagree with them in this case. If this had simply been a single incident when the nurse gave into the temptation to give a difficult patient a well-deserved slap I might even be sympathetic.
However the severity of the injury and presence of other injuries point to a pattern of behaviour that suggests that this individual may have been systematically been abusing patients in his care.
Not every nurse is drawn to the field because they want to help, some are drawn for darker and equally compelling reasons. Under normal circumstances the close supervision that nurses work under weeds out the abusive ones quite quickly, but as the health system becomes more stretched, as criteria for entry into the profession become more relaxed and those surrounding them become more busy and less able to supervise these sort of cases will increase.
JA_Cruise
Agree with Frungy. There is just no excuse for this behavior regardless of pay or stress. If your driven that far that you have to hit someone, then your in the wrong industry. This is not bootcamp training soldiers, this is caring for the elder and this man should be prosecuted to the extent of the law.
Dennis Bauer
This guy is in the wrong line of work, apply to the local oyabun please.
nishikat
Looking forward to the time robots can really assist human labor in this area. It's time for Japan to innovate here with their high innovation but lower birthrate. They can program these machines to do the routine (as well as the really DIRTY) work while leaving the staff to do the work that requires 100% human judgement. And count me in when I get old!!! If I had kids I would not want them to quit their jobs and lower the country's GDP over taking care of my old self at the age I would not have any memory of it anyway. Less assaults too from the staff.
loginmind
This work seemed a hard work for this guy. The serious injuries told us that he didn't like the elderly woman , he chose the way to relax by beating a elderly women .So why that nursing home hired this man ? They must have been careful when employed a man for this work.
kaimycahl
This may sound a little off he blamed wok and relationships so could this old lady he was beating one of his patio ship partners
destinystring
Japan has only a few of old and sick people. Even less people suffer with dementia. Robots would be a good idea thinks nishikat, to help here. What a bad joke !! I work for many years with elderly people; even in Japan. I had an old farm house in Fukui-ken where many old people came and were looking for help. Not everybody can be in this line of work. Some people (sick themselves) are just snap. Japan has a massiv problem with it`s old generatiion. Denying that huge number of old people living with dementia; denying the need for help for immobile old people. Every country here in Europe face this huge task. I do live now in Germany were people get 400.000 Yen a month for a place in an elderly home for people with dementia. It will not solve the problem at all. Workers are horribly underpaid and the society is not interested. We have 3 million people with dementia. Japan ? Yeats had it right : " .. what rough beast is slouching towards Bethlehem to be born ? "
Kanade
No matter how hard that job is, he CHOSE it himself. Leave instead of whining, theres always a choice. I dont get such people. You either do your best at it or leave.
sensei258
I did this type of work for several years after retiring from the military. There were many times when I was stressed, but I never felt the need to beat anyone. In fact, it was difficult not to start loving some of the people we cared for. I found myself wishing we had more time or less of a workload in order to give better care instead of just enough care.