Police failed to identify nearly 1,700 victims of child pornography in '07

The Mainichi Shimbun
June 2, 2008
Source: http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080602p2a00m0na011000c.html

Police failed to identify nearly 1,700 victims among the 143 child pornography cases that they uncovered across the country in 2007, a Mainichi Shimbun survey has found.

Doctors have concluded that 1,696 of the unidentified people in the pornographic images were children under the age of 18 judging from their bodily characteristics.

The finding has demonstrated that it is extremely difficult to stop the deluge of child porn, say police officials.

"The fact that there are many child victims who can't be identified means that a massive number of child porn images are repeatedly copied and in circulation. The ages of many of those in porn images can't be confirmed, " said Masanobu Fukuda, an official of the National Police Agency (NPA). "The actual number of victims is probably much larger."

The Law Punishing Acts Related to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography prohibits the sale and public display of porn images of children aged below 18. However, it allows possession of such images to view them, which critics say contributes to the spread of such images.

NPA figures show that police departments across the country uncovered 567 child porn cases involving 304 victims. However, the figures do not include incidents in which the victims were not identified.

The Mainichi Shimbun interviewed the nation's 47 prefectural police departments including the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in a bid to get to the bottom of such incidents.

It found that 23 of the police forces charged the suspects in 143 cases after doctors deemed that 1,696 unidentified people in the pornographic images concerned were children judging from their bodily characteristics.

In one case, Osaka Prefectural Police arrested a man who made a girl take an obscene photo of herself and send it by e-mail to his mobile phone in April 2007. After police were unable to identify the victim because the records of her sending the photo had been deleted from his mobile phone, a doctor commissioned by the force determined that she was aged between 13 and 15.

In February, Okayama Prefectural Police arrested a man who put up for auction porn images that he had bought through an Internet auction after a doctor deemed the 12 people in the images were aged under 11.

The MPD, Kanagawa Prefectural Police and Iwate Prefectural Police abandoned forming cases against the suspects in the alleged child porn cases after doctors were unable to confirm that the victims were under 18.

(Mainichi Japan) June 2, 2008