Feb 06 (Japan Times) - The mother of a 10-year-old girl who died last month at their home in Chiba Prefecture has told police that she sometimes gave the girl no food, at her husband’s insistence, in the days before her daughter’s death, investigative sources said Tuesday.
Nagisa Kurihara, 31, was sent to prosecutors that day. She was arrested a day earlier for allegedly failing to stop the assault of her daughter Mia.
Mia was found dead on Jan. 24 inside the bathroom of their home, in the city of Noda, with multiple bruises on her body. Nagisa’s husband Yuichiro, 41, was arrested the next day on suspicion of assault, but an autopsy has failed to determine the cause of Mia’s death.
While Mia was not underweight to an extreme degree, the autopsy revealed there was almost no food inside her stomach, indicating that she had not been fed sufficiently, according to the sources.
Prior to her arrest, the mother told investigators that, despite her pleas not to do so, her husband sometimes woke Mia up in the middle of the night and made her stand for long periods.
Yuichiro has told investigators he began making Mia stand from 10 a.m. on Jan. 24, and that he does not consider his action wrong because he was just “disciplining†her.
He is suspected of assaulting Mia between 10 a.m. to 11:10 p.m. the same day, including dousing her repeatedly with cold water.
Investigators have been informed that the mother herself may have been a victim of Yuichiro’s domestic violence.
Source: ANNnewsCH
