crime

Woman gets 8 years for fatally beating 11-yr-old daughter with golf club

48 Comments

A 30-year-old unemployed woman was sentenced to eight years in prison by the Hiroshima District Court Tuesday for fatally beating her 11-year-old daughter with a golf club at their home in Fuchu, Hiroshima Prefecture, in October 2012.

The court heard that the defendant, Asato Horiuchi, beat her daughter Yuma with a golf club in the morning, Fuji TV reported. While she was driving her daughter over to her parents' house in the afternoon, Yuma lost consciousness and Horiuchi stopped at a police koban for help. The girl was taken to hospital where she was pronounced dead a short time later.

According to the Hiroshima prefectural government's child welfare division, Horiuchi and her mother abused Yuma in February 2009. At that time, officials placed Yuma in a children's institution where she remained for two years until her mother took custody of her again last year.

Horiuchi told police she got angry because her daughter lied to her.

Pictures of the smiling young girl circulated in the media following the incident leading commentators to ask what she could have possibly done to drive her mother to beat her.

© Japan Today

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

48 Comments
Login to comment

Once an abuser, always an abuser. Don't give the child back to their own attackers!

20 ( +20 / -0 )

what she could have possibly done to drive her mother to beat her.

My bet, nothing! The mother is just a heartless wench. Mind you they already took the girl away once because she was being abused, and yet they gave the wench another chance.

One wonders where the father is. Either way, 8 years....WAY too short.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

Only 8 years for beating a child to death!? The sentence itself is a crime.

30 ( +31 / -1 )

80 years would not be enough. This is just way too short. She will be young enough to have more poor kids when her term is over......

8 ( +8 / -0 )

8 years?! Absolutely ridiculous.

Poor girl did not have a good life at all :( I can only hope that she's at a much better place now...

5 ( +6 / -1 )

I can only echo the sentiments above.

EIGHT YEARS!!!!

For beating an innocent, defenceless child to DEATH?

This is not justice!

17 ( +18 / -1 )

Barbaric....Japan needs tougher laws...she should be serving life.

10 ( +12 / -2 )

Again?

And just 8 years for child murder? you could get more than that for an armed robbery where no one even gets hurt..

8 ( +10 / -2 )

Eight years? That's not even as long as the poor girl was alive. Ridiculous. This should be 20 at a minimum.

4 ( +7 / -3 )

Disgusting. Goes to show - yet again - just how out of touch Japanese judges are. The sentence shows that an evil adult can torture and murder an innocent child in Japan - and be released whilst still relatively young.

Rest in Peace to the poor girl.

4 ( +6 / -2 )

This is what I hate about Japan, why are in family murders so lightly punished?

8 years for a life of a little girl...

RIP... poor little girl...

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Why did the children's institution approve the return of Yuma to her mother? Eight years is too short for killing a human being.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

Steal peko chan get 7 years in jail, murder your 11 year old girl get 8 years, it doesn't make sense...

5 ( +6 / -1 )

8 years? Is this another case of lazy Japantoday reporting. Are you SURE you didn't forget a zero. 80 years is what you meant to publish right?

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Yeah, the Japanese courts do tend to sentence in-family murderers pretty lightly. Maybe if they were to give them full sentences the frequency of these incidents may drop.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

i totally agree that 8 years is not enough, but there is a huge difference between premeditated murder and manslaughter. the fact that she stopped "at a koban for help" supports that latter.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

The girl had the time to see herself dying, is their penal law do not add time for a crime with sadism, or consider it was not the first time ?

No indignation for this ?

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Pictures of the smiling young girl circulated in the media following the incident leading commentators to ask what she could have possibly done to drive her mother to beat her.

This line absolutely disturbs me. The implicit undertone is that there is a possible justification for this crime. Nothing she could have done would have justified being beaten with an iron bar, so to even ask the question is insulting to the child. Perhaps something has been lost in translation, but I am amazed that anyone would even raise the question of the immediate events preceding the beating - whatever they were, they were not justifiable.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

Child services to the rescue yet again.

-2 ( +3 / -5 )

8 years? Sick and unbelievable. Yet the Japanese "justice" system has long since failed to surprise me.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Dear god... what kind of person could do that to their own child?

0 ( +2 / -2 )

What kind of screwed up "Mommy Dearest" s*** is this?! EIGHT YEARS?! She brutally murdered a defenseless child with a GOLF CLUB. Unbelievable, well, the action, not the sentence. That seems to be the norm these days...

2 ( +3 / -1 )

what kind of person could do that to their own child?

The kind of person that should have gotten much much harsher sentence than eight years in prison.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Two things, firstly they should not be giving a child back to the parents if they have been abusing or beating any child ever, and secondly this 8 year sentence would only make sense if this woman was beaten with a golf club for the entire 8 years of her sentence.

Child murder should carry the harshest of sentences that society can tolerate, whether that be life a sentence or a death sentence that is for society to deal with but 8 years is a flaming joke.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

She should hang!!!

-1 ( +4 / -5 )

secondly this 8 year sentence would only make sense if this woman was beaten with a golf club for the entire 8 years of her sentence.

I doubt it. I heard inmates are treated and fed well and even get to eat cake at Christmas.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

She was given a second chance to live with her daughter. Whilst her child was ward of the state she had a chance to reform. An 8 year is a joke, do they intend to rehabilitate this woman. Rehabilitation should be for people who commit minor crime. Shame on the court system for it has failed to provide justice for the poor girl. This repeat abuser and murderer should never be released, Shame Shame Shame.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

I may be wrong in my assumption to these beatings and/or deaths of children, however,they all seem to center around one of the parents being unemployed.

The government needs to create more (in) country jobs and train the unemployed to do the jobs of those that they want non-japanese to come into the country to do or send those jobs out of the country to be done.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

That's it?!? 8 years??? Seems extremely lenient for murder...

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Abe and his gang of corporates are getting richer by the day while the ordinary Japanese people suffer; more suicides, more killings of family members, more robberies and thefts.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

EIGHT YEARS - How about life, hanging and/or sterilizing her so that she cannot have any more children

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Pictures of the smiling young girl circulated in the media following the incident leading commentators to ask what she could have possibly done to drive her mother to beat her.

I freakin hate in Japan that they are able to show a dead child's picture but will no way or how show a child murderer's picture.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Oh my. This country has it's priorities wrong. You'll get 5 years for smoking a joint and ONLY 8 for killing a child?

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Only 8 years? I guess she's sorry for what she's done and won't do it again, right? Ugh!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Wow she beat the young girl with a golf club and instead of taking her to the hospital she was "DRIVING" her over to her mothers house? Again the JAPANESE system failed again! and AGAIN!

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

How many years would she have gotten if she had murdered a strangers child by beating him/her to death with a golf club? It shouldn't matter your family relation when you beat someone to death.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

8 years? should have been 80!

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Pitiful...

0 ( +1 / -1 )

This woman should stay in jail until the child stops being dead.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Mohatma Gandhi said " If you are angry, write down paper that why you are angry, how do you manage not to be angry." This incidents really struck me. Woman is given the ability to give a birth. This is really special ability that man cannot do. Giving birth is so misterious and precious. If you beat your daughter, you are beating yourselves, because she is sharing half of you. I'm really sorry for the daughter. No mattter what she did, we have to love our kids.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

8 years......typical, Japan

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

18 years would have been more appropriate

0 ( +0 / -0 )

It's no mystery poor Yuma would lie (or not) to her mother. She's is terrified of what her mother will do to her, specially reflecting back the torment and abuse this poor girl endured from both, mother and grandmother. My guess is the girl didn't want to be dropped off at her grandmother's in the first place, had to say yes just to get the mother off her back and, then the girl decided to change her mind, making it a lie to this...monstrous mother and eventually taking a despicable action against poor defenseless Yuma. I say, 25 to life of hard labor sentence is what she deserves. RIP little girl.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

How terribly, terribly sad. It looks like a typical example of the vicious cycle of abuse. The mother did to her daughter what was done to herself as a child, and I'll bet you anything that the grandmother was abused as a child, too. Yuma, I wish you'd been adopted out and found your "forever family." May your soul rest in peace.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

The person who let the girl return to her mother should get 8 years. The mother should never get the see the light of day.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

The sentence is only 8 years because it was a child. It is customary in Japan to give lighter sentences in cases of murder or manslaughter of children because, well, it's just a child, not a fully formed adult.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

The sentence is only 8 years because it was a child. It is customary in Japan to give lighter sentences in cases of murder or manslaughter of children because, well, it's just a child, not a fully formed adult.

First I've ever heard of this. Where did you hear it?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

It is customary in Japan to give lighter sentences in cases of murder or manslaughter of children because, well, it's just a child, not a fully formed adult. since when is a childs life worth any less than a adults!? in most countries adults value there childrens lives as important if not more than there own. how many parents would sacrifice themselves to save there child/children, I would if it came to it. if Japans courts, of Japanese think children as lesser value than adults then I truely pity them. as the saying goes "Children are our future"

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites