‘Heinous’: police in Japan uncover ‘online paedophile group’ of teachers

Two primary school teachers have been arrested for taking and sharing indecent photos of girls, sparking a nationwide search for accomplices

Two primary school teachers in Japan have been charged with taking photos of young girls in their underwear and then sharing the images with at least 10 more colleagues, in a case that has roused public outcry.

On Tuesday, police arrested Yuji Moriyama, 42, a teacher at Kosaka Elementary School in Nagoya, and Fumiya Kosemura, 37, a teacher at Hongodai Elementary School in Yokohama.

Around 70 indecent photographs and video clips were found on Moriyama’s computer, along with up-skirt images and deepfake composite images that combined children’s heads with other sexualised pictures, the Asahi newspaper reported, quoting the Aichi prefectural police. Some appeared to have been taken in school.

Both men admitted the charges, police said.

The investigation has now turned to identifying the other members of the “online paedophile group” who also received the images. Early investigations suggest the group was managed by Moriyama and was made up of primary and junior high school teachers with a similar fondness for pornographic images of very young girls.

In Japan, the ages of primary and junior high school children range from six to 15.

Nagoya’s Tokai Television broadcast a special report on the case on Thursday evening to coincide with a three-hour meeting of parents at the school where Moriyama had worked.

At the meeting, the head teacher apologised to parents for the incident and for failing to notice that anything was amiss. He also said a search would be carried out for hidden cameras on the school premises.

As she left the meeting, one mother told the local station: “My child may have been a victim. Where should I direct my anger when there is no way to confirm this?”

The arrests took place just days before a new committee of the Children and Families Agency met for the first time to consider implementing a system to verify whether applicants for jobs working with children have been convicted of a sex crime.

Junko Mihara, minister for child policies, opened the meeting on Thursday by describing sexual crimes against children as “outrageous and unforgivable” and committed the government to tackling the problem.

Funding for the system, based on Britain’s Disclosure and Barring Service, will be available in the next financial year. In the meantime, a new law designed to prevent sexual abuses against children will go into effect this December.

‘Sad and ashamed’

Fujiko Yamada, founder of the Child Maltreatment Centre in Kanagawa prefecture, said that while the government’s efforts were a step in the right direction, they should have been implemented long ago and might still not solve the problem entirely.

“The new disclosure rules are something, but an applicant is only required to disclose if they were convicted of a criminal act, meaning that if that person was investigated but not eventually prosecuted then they are not required to tell a potential employer,” she told This Week in Asia.

“That is a loophole and means the law is not working to completely protect children. There will still be cases when schools do not know that a person applying for a job has been investigated in the past.”

The new legislation also did nothing to help educate teachers and day care staff about the signs that a child had been abused, meaning that incidents would go unreported, she said.

“That means more children will continue to be molested or to have indecent photos or videos taken of them and shared,” she said. “I don’t know why nothing has been done until now and why more is not being done to stop this.”

Asked what she felt about the recent case, she said: “Sad and ashamed that more has not been done.”

The Japanese public was similarly outraged.

“I am at a loss for words,” Ryo Uchida, a sociology professor at Nagoya University’s Graduate School of Education, wrote in a comment to a Nagoya Television article on the case. “Of all the cases of teacher abuse against children, specifically corporal punishment and sexual assault, that I have seen until now, this is a truly unprecedented and heinous case.”

Another post read: “This is a despicable crime committed by a teacher who is supposed to protect children and is completely unacceptable.”

A comment under Tokai Television’s news clip demanded that the names of anyone found guilty of receiving images of children be released, along with their photos, so they would be known in the local community.

“Japan’s judicial system is too lenient and these people can be quickly released,” the message read. “If the judiciary and politicians do not act, then the public has a right to know and to apply social sanctions.”

Unfortunately, Yamada believes it is “inevitable” that more teachers are abusing their students, pointing to a number of similarly horrific cases.

In March, for example, 34-year-old teacher Shota Mizuto was arrested on suspicion of spraying bodily fluids on the backpack of a 15-year-old female student as they stood at a railway station in Nagoya, the Shueisha news magazine reported.

A subsequent examination of his mobile phone revealed that he had also mixed his own bodily fluids into his pupils’ lunches and sprayed the liquid on the mouthpiece of a child’s recorder.

The first hearing in Mizuto’s case is scheduled for July.