Teachers, doctors part of record 570 people referred to prosecutors over child-porn: NPA
December 12, 2018 (Mainichi Japan)
TOKYO — Police sent documents to prosecutors here accusing 570 men of possessing child pornography, including 27 educators and 15 medical experts, according to National Police Agency (NPA) statistics.
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The report shows the number of cases where prefectural police around Japan referred papers to prosecutors on suspicion of violating the law against child prostitution and child pornography from January 2017 to the end of June 2018.
Of 27 educators, 18 school teachers and staff members at day care, kindergarten, cram school, after-school care centers and child welfare facilities account for 4.7 percent of the total number of 570 men. Some 2.6 percent of the total involved medical experts — six doctors and a few nurses, therapists and technicians.
A senior officer of the NPA pointed out, “The crime of possessing child pornography is likely to be slapped with a fine, so there are cases that the licenses of educators and medical experts charged with the crime weren’t revoked.”
According to statistics by occupation that police could identify, company employee is the largest number at 240, accounting for 42.1 percent of all cases. There are also 62 unemployed men, or 10.8 percent of the total, as well as 37 incidents involving part-time workers, or 6.5 percent, and 22 cases of dispatched employees, or 3.8 percent.
Among the men with an average age of 37, half of them became interested in child pornography by the age of 22 after they started to see images on the internet and in DVDs, animations and games.
In May 2017, the Metropolitan Police Department accused a child-porn DVD dealer of violating the law related to child prostitution and found a list of some 7,000 customers who purchased such merchandise. The police had charged 476 of them by the end of June 2018, including educators, medical experts, police officers, prosecutors and court officials.
(Japanese original by Toshiaki Uchihashi, City News Department)
