Japan seems to be having quite a few problems when it comes to child exploitation recently. Mainichi is reporting that there's been a spike in child abuse and child pornography cases this year, reaching record highs:
A total of 149 child-abuse cases in which police arrested or reported suspects to public prosecutors occurred during the first six months of this year, while 266 such child-pornography cases were reported, a report by the National Police Agency has shown.
Both figures were the highest since police started recording data in 2000. The number of child-abuse cases was 24.2 percent higher than the figure recorded during the same period last year, while child-pornography cases rose 18.8 percent.
There's certainly a strong argument that this number would be a lot higher if it were not for lolicon material being allowed in the country. Now, the argument is very much like the chicken or egg scenario -- does the existance of this material cause more incidents because it creates more lolicons, or does it stop those who are on the dangerous edge from acting out more often?
The article goes on to cite that the overall number of child deaths have gone down by 35%, but the overall number of cases has gone up 22%. The fact that these cases are still in the low hundreds means that a sudden outbreak by one or two people can cause a huge swing in the percentage reports.
As for the child abuse, the largest number of cases comes from sexual assault -- 27 out of the 120 incidents. A quarter of the abuse cases happened to children aged one year or younger.
Police said that 718 child prostitution cases were reported during the period. The number of child victims in these cases totaled 651. Two of the children were elementary school students, 210 were junior high school students and 265 were high school students.
Many of the children, according to the article, were lured to the predators via BBS systems on the Internet -- a sign of just how pervasive Japan's use of the Internet has become. In my mind, this shows that it's not necessarily lolicon material that causes people to act like this -- they're already sexual deviants, and they're now taking greater advantage of what tools they have at their disposal.
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