A survey conducted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology revealed that 200 public school teachers and staff received disciplinary action for sexual assault, including molestation and harassment, against children and students in fiscal 2020.
This is the eighth consecutive year that sexual misconduct committed by educators has exceeded 200 cases. The number was down by 73 incidents in fiscal 2019.
However, among the 200 cases, only 91 educators were dismissed, while five were suspended from their teaching duties. In 39 cases, parents asked that no disciplinary action be taken against the teachers involved, the survey said.
© Japan Today
37 Comments
Login to comment
Iron Lad
Good news!
snowymountainhell
Not “Good news.” @IronLad 4:54pm. Please read: “*among the 200 cases, only 91 educators were dismissed, while five were suspended from their teaching duties. In 39 cases, …*
parents asked that no disciplinary action be taken against the teachers involved,…”
The latter possibly meaning compensation was made to drop prosecution.
nandakandamanda
About one third of them were for harrassment.
Fuzzy
Don't understand this. If my child were involved I would be out for blood!
Cricky
Add a few 0s and might be closer to the truth.
blahblah222
They were only fired from their school district, they can easily find another job at another school district.
2, none of them are ever charged with anything criminally, as rape of even young children rarely if ever results in any criminal punishments. Usually it will be the girl who will get sent to a mental institute instead and put on heavy drugs (personal experience from my friend) , and the perpetuating teacher continues to live happily ever after or even laughs about it on SNS.Many in the country places more blame on their daughters instead, and the family feel more ashamed than wishing to push for punishment, this is especially true in more conservative and traditional families, they are more inclined to protect family honor.
Lindsay
The dark side of Japanese culture is an unhealthy sexual fascination with young girls.
snowymountainhell
Shouldn’t these surveys should be conducted independently by the Ministry of Justice ?
Can Japanese and foreign resident parents trust a survey conducted and compiled by the same ministry that continues to allow the same, allegedly ‘disciplined’ educators to continue to work with children and migrate to other areas to avoid persecution/prosecution ?
Garthgoyle
Check J-porn or J-softporn and you'll see a bunch of models wearing elementary school bathing suits. It's sickening, to say the least.
SDCA
I'm in favor of having a registered sex offender system for the safety of both women, children, and men. The thing is, sometimes the wrong person gets accused of groping on trains and a system like this would ruin their lives. We need to do something about the prosecution in this country first before we can implement a suitable system.
Rob Nads
When I used to work as an ALT in a junior high school, my supervising teacher - a man in his 50s or 60s, asked me which of the girls in the class I "liked". I said, "none, they are all too young for me". And he said, "don't be shy, I like AA and BB (both aged 14) and Sensei YY (the other elderly male teacher) likes CC and DD". Quite the concern...
Ramzel
That is very disturbing
Fuzzy
@Rob Nads
Did you report it to anyone? If not, shame on you.
Fra poke
All 200 should be fired without their pension if found guilty!
blahblah222
if you have a daughter who will attend japanese school, you will need to teach her from very young to never be alone at school. It is not uncommon for teachers to essentially run rape rooms at school. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it, the schools will defend the teachers to the death, the police will be unwilling to step in even after the fact. There are no enforceable law in Japan to punish rape vs school children by teachers and the worst thing that can happen to a teacher for raping their students is changing jobs to another school. There have never been a case where a teacher is punished criminally for raping their student.
virusrex
At some point the government have to recognize this is a generalized problem and not just some few exceptions. Acting after problems happens is not enough, some actually preventive system has to be put in place, even if this means changing the "traditional" way schools are run trusting teachers and other adults to behave properly.
shogun36
so of those 200(+) in the 8 years are repeat offenders?
I'm guessing 200(+)
Fuzzy
@blahblah222
Do you have some facts/evidence to back this up? I have no doubt the attitudes towards sexual abuse in Japan are concerning, and as a parent myself it's something I'm very concerned about. But to say teachers run "rape rooms" is a very extreme statement.
Sanjinosebleed
Yeh wonder what the disciplinary measure is…don’t do it again …or don’t get caught again???
absolutlely shameless unconscionable behaviour!
Sven Asai
Yes, there’s nothing in the whole universe more difficult to resist. Anyway, no excuses, if you can’t stand it, don’t become a teacher or face the according consequences.
Luddite
The fact most of them are still employed as teachers is shocking. They should be in prison and then on a sex offenders register for life.
GBR48
-Don't understand this. If my child were involved I would be out for blood!
Most Japanese people do not want to become involved with the legal system any more than the rest of us do. Nor do they want their child's situation to be publicised. Nobody wants to stick out or risk being branded a 'troublemaker'.
In both JP and SK, 'compensation' is hard-wired into the legal system to protect the rich and reduce prison costs. If you are in debt or struggling you may find it difficult to turn down. In the West the cost of legal action and the trauma of the courtroom do much the same.
It is inadvisable to be 'out for blood' in a country with the death penalty.
-Check J-porn or J-softporn and you'll see a bunch of models wearing elementary school bathing suits.
Traditional school uniforms have been part of Western porn for over a century.
A sex offender register would be good. A very large fixed fine may dissuade a few chikans - teacher's pay is not high. But that would only go so far. Crimes of compulsion are extremely difficult to prevent.
Teaching kids to protect themselves only goes so far. Traditional cultures like JP (and SK) can be seen as having increased vulnerability to abuse hard-wired into them, in the expectation that younger people are compliant to the orders of older people.
Talk to your kids. If you have concerns, pull them from the school and move them to another, or home school.
purple_depressed_bacon
Why the hell not???? Parents should be beyond incensed by the gross misconduct of the teachers who violated their child. Why would they not push for them to not only be fired and never be able to work in education again but also to be charged and thrown in jail??? This is lunacy; do parents here not care what happens to their kids? Is saving face and not making a scene THAT important? Ffs...
purple_depressed_bacon
There's a mini documentary on YouTube depicting this tween wannabe pop star. Majority of her fans are middle aged men and when interviewed about why they are a fan, one guy said that it was like having a daughter. Yeah, no bud, no father should look at their daughter with that glint in their eye.
snowymountainhell
Sad but you summed up all aspects of how this ‘culture(?)’ fosters the abuses of children & minors and perpetuates a cycle of abuse @GBR48 10:03pm:
Also, sickening to read such condoning comments from some resident foreigners:
GBR48
You may not like it, but some of these cases, where parents didn't want to press charges, may have been more 'complicated'.
When I was at school, around 14-16, the girls in our class would only date guys who were (1-10 years) older.
It was different for boys - If we so much as smiled at a girl who was a year younger than us, we would be condemned as a pedo by our classmates.
We had a young male physics teacher and the girls would compete each year to send him the Christmas card with the most explicit message in it. They would hand them to him in lessons and watch him blush as he opened them. If they could have bedded him, most of them would have.
Only two girls in our class got pregnant before 16. Another stole her best friend's husband (he left and married her). Not sure when that started.
Teenage girls are scarey. Us boys occupied ourselves with computer games, football and any mags we could find dumped in the local wood.
GBR48
Sorry. that should be 'best friend's father'.
CaptDingleheimer
When I was a JET, I had a drinking buddy, a Japanese male friend from a nearby town who was one of his high school's English teachers. He was about 30. He always maintained that on graduation day, he would exchange phone numbers with all the prettiest girls who seemed keen, and in the months following graduation, he'd sleep with a good number of them. He claimed that lots of the younger male teachers did the same. I've heard of this phenomenon from others, as well.
This doesn't constitute assault per se, but it is certainly, if true, an indication of intent that probably existed for the teacher regarding certain students back when they were his students.
Peter Neil
Good Lord. What a sad thing.
snowymountainhell
As an ALT, @RobNads 12:04pm you admittedly played it safe with your ‘good strategy’, making sure these students were 18 ‘before sealing the deal’ but just yesterday evening you gave anecdotes about older teachers that were “*quite a concern” *?
May have been legal but still doesn’t seem that much more virtuous, don’t you think ? The intent appears the same:
Rob Nads
@snowymountainhell
Bit of a difference between a 60 year old wanting 14 year olds, vs. me (23 years old at the time) wanting 18 year olds.