TOKYO (JAPAN)
ChurchMilitant
April 6, 2020
By Paul Murano
Decades-long record considered the ‘tip of the iceberg’
Japanese bishops have at last published their findings on the sexual abuse of minors, almost 20 years after the investigative process began.
On April 5, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan (CBCJ) released the full report in an issue of Katorikku Shimbun (The Catholic Weekly) published by the bishops’ conference. It will be uploaded in English to the CBCJ website on April 7.
In a cover message to the report, Nagasaki Abp. Mitsuaki Takami, president of the CBCJ, apologized for the delay. “Due to difficulty in understanding the situation and inadequate survey methods, this report is very late, but we have decided to now publish the results,” he stated.
The investigation, conducted by the CBCJ’s Desk for the Protection of Children and Women, found 16 cases of child abuse from the 1950s to the present. The decade with the largest number of cases was the 1960s, which had five. The sexual divide of abused girls to boys was nearly equal, though incomplete records make exact counts impossible.
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