TOKYO, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Tokyo District Court on Tuesday handed down an eight-year prison sentence to the mother of a five-year-old girl who died from gross neglect in Tokyo's Meguro Ward last year.
It was found that the mother, Yuri Funato, 27, was aware that her young daughter was being abused by her husband at the time, which resulted in the five-year-old Yua dying of sepsis after developing pneumonia in March last year.
Funato had chosen not to take her daughter, who had been heinously abused for a protracted period of time by her then husband, 34-year-old Yudai Funato, to hospital in late February, even when the young girl's physical condition was rapidly deteriorating.
"Her actions deserve strong blame... One can only imagine the pain, sadness and hopelessness the girl must have felt at not being saved by her beloved mother," presiding judge Minoru Morishita said, with reference to the girl's mother not feeding her daughter since late February and not providing her with essential medical treatment.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, seeking an 11-year prison sentence for parental neglect, said that as a parent she had failed to do even the "bare minimum" to protect her daughter's life.
"She failed to do a parent's bare minimum of protecting her child by contacting a medical facility or her own parents," the prosecutors said.
"She ultimately acted of her own volition," the judge added, although the court did recognize that Funato had suffered psychological abuse from her then husband.
Yudai Funato has been indicted on charges of negligence and assaulting the child resulting in her death. His trial is set to begin on Oct. 1.
Yua's death and the fatal abuse of 10-year-old Mia Kurihara in Tokyo's neighboring prefecture of Chiba in January this year, as a result of being physically assaulted and deprived of food and sleep, not only shocked the nation, but also led to the government revising laws banning parents from physically punishing children.
