A Parent CAN Get Prosecuted For Child Abduction In Japan

[Mulboyne]

Asahi: Former Chinese husband found guilty of abducting daughters
In another case highlighting legal complexities if international marriages fall apart, a court found a Chinese man guilty of "abducting and taking overseas" his two daughters from their Japanese mother 10 years ago. The Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo District Court sentenced Qin Weijie, 55, to two years in prison, suspended for three years, on Thursday. According to the ruling, Qin and his Japanese wife were undergoing divorce procedures in June 1999, when he talked to their daughters, then 7 and 8, on a street in Akishima in western Tokyo. He took them on a flight to Hong Kong from Kansai Airport. The girls had been living with their mother at the time. When the divorce was finalized, a Japanese court gave the mother sole custody of the children. But Qin refused to hand over the daughters. "(The defendant) disrespected the law, and his behavior was malicious. The circumstances after his criminal act were not good, either," Presiding Judge Manabu Kato said...more...

The link will expire so the rest of the article is also in the next post.

[Mulboyne]

According to Qin's 44-year-old former wife, she was staying at a shelter with the two girls in 1999 to escape Qin's physical abuse. She said she spent the next 10 years searching for her children, fearing that they may be abused. But the presiding judge said the daughters "grew up with a proper amount of love." He also noted that the younger daughter chose to live with her father in China, even after returning to Japan temporarily earlier this year. After the ruling, Qin said: "In Shanghai, not only my second daughter but also my 1-year-old son from my remarriage are waiting. I'd like to go home soon and fulfill my duty as their father." He had told the court that he took the girls to China for their own sake because "their life was unstable" in Japan at the time. Prosecutors had demanded a three-year prison term for Qin.

When the daughters returned to Japan in January to renew their passports, the second daughter returned to China on her own will, but the elder daughter decided to stay with her mother. Qin was arrested in September when he entered Japan for the purpose of getting the older daughter back. According to the mother, the older daughter broke down in tears when she passed by the site where she was taken away 10 years ago. The girl is also being treated for an eating disorder, the mother said. "My daughter is afraid of my ex-husband, and she is emotionally hurt. How can we get back the lost 10 years?" the mother said. Disappointed with the suspended sentence, the mother urged the Japanese government to sign the Hague Convention on international child abduction and adopt measures to protect mothers and children who have escaped from abuse. Under the convention, when a child has been taken from his or her country of residence, the child must be returned to that country. Neither Japan nor China is party to the Hague Convention.

In recent months, cases of legal problems have surfaced concerning divorced Japanese women bringing their children to Japan without the consent of their former husbands overseas. When the mother reported the abduction to police, she was told there was nothing they could do. After she obtained legal custody, she asked the Foreign Ministry, the Chinese government, Diet members and lawyers for support. She even traveled to China several times but could not get her daughters back, she said. In 2004, Tokyo police finally accepted her criminal complaint against Qin. According to the welfare ministry, there were 37,000 international marriages in Japan last year, as well as 19,000 divorces among international couples.

[Mulboyne]

Here's another interesting twist in the case:

Mainichi: Japanese consulate renewed passports of children taken overseas without consent

The Japanese consulate general in Shanghai renewed the passports of two girls without permission from their Japanese mother in violation of the Passport Law, after their Chinese father took them to China in the wake of a marriage breakup, it has been learned. The consulate general renewed the passports of the girls, now aged 18 and 17, in 2004, despite their mother's repeated requests to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs not to renew the passports. As a result of the consulate general's actions, the girls remained in China for five more years, and the situation was not resolved until the father came to Japan in September this year and was arrested on suspicion of child abduction. "As a result of the government's mistake, I had to wait five years for the return of my daughters," the children's mother, who is in her 40s, said. "I want the government to move actively to protect the rights of children."

Passports for minors are valid for five years. Passport Law regulations state that permission must be obtained from a person who has custody of the children for the passports to be issued. Representatives of the woman said that she and the Chinese man, 55-year-old Qin Weijie, married in 1988 and lived in Tokyo, but she left due to domestic violence by Qin. In June 1999, Qin met his daughters as they were traveling to school near the home to which his wife had moved, and he took them to China. Qin and his wife divorced in 2000, and she was granted custody of the children. However, as she didn't know where they were, she repeatedly asked the Foreign Ministry not to renew their passports. She also filed a criminal complaint against Qin accusing him of abducting the children and taking them overseas. However, the consulate general renewed the passports in January 2004.

About five years later, when the deadline for renewing the passports of the children was again approaching, Qin contacted his former wife asking her to sign a consent form for renewal, but she said she wanted to meet them directly and confirm what they wanted to do, so the two came to Japan in January. Qin was arrested after entering Japan in September this year at Narita Airport, trying to take his elder daughter, who wanted to remain in Japan, back with him. His former wife said the eldest daughter was suffering from an eating disorder and panic attacks, due in part to violent behavior from Qin.

On Thursday, Qin was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, suspended for three years, after going on trial facing international abduction and other charges. In handing down the ruling, Presiding Judge Manabu Kato criticized Qin's actions, saying, "His act of taking the children away without notice deserves criticism," but noted, "At the time Qin also held custody of the children." Commenting on the wife's position, the judge stated: "It is impossible to imagine the mental anguish of being separated for such a long time from the children she loved." The Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Japanese Nationals Overseas Safety Division admitted the mistake in renewing the passports without consent, but said it could not provide detailed background information on individual cases.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

As always, one rule for those of Yamato blood, another rule for the others....
...I just wish they could be a little more subtle with their racism.

[Mock Cockpit]

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Japanese Nationals Overseas Safety Division

Hahahahahahahahaha, sounds like it should be an Onion article.

[Mulboyne]

The first thing to stand out from this particular case is that the Japanese legal system does have a procedure to intervene where a parent does not recognize a domestic custody decision. In much of the coverage of abduction cases, you often read how the police are reluctant to become involved in family quarrels and certainly won't enforce court-ordered visitation rights. There has also been the suggestion that they wouldn't arrest a non-compliant parent who refuses to return children to the other parent when they are granted sole custody. This case shows that arrest and prosecution is possible, even when the child is not available to be returned, albeit that the police did not accept her complaint until 2004. I'd be interested to know if police have arrested and prosecuted a Japanese father in a similar case. Perhaps they have. What it does at least show, is that Japan won't have to see so much of a revolution in the way the law is applied if the country signs Hague. The crime of parental abduction is clearly recognized. Hague doesn't even require that a parent be prosecuted, only that the children be returned.

The other aspect of note is the way that overseas consulates are pretty free and easy about issuing passports to Japanese children abroad. It is often claimed that consulates have issued new passports for children at the request of a Japanese parent which has enabled that parent to take them to Japan without the knowledge of the other parent. The report by the Mainichi confirms that there are few safeguards there which, in this case, worked to the advantage of the foreign father.

Aside from that, there aren't too many aspects of this case which have direct corollaries with cases where the Japanese parent is the abductor. The court was enforcing a domestic decision but there aren't really instances of a foreign parent winning domestic custody. It's also clear that the Japanese mother had no more means at her disposal to recover her children than any foreign parent trying to do the same from outside Japan. Even if Japan signed Hague, China is not a signatory so there would be no mechanism to force China to act.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

The first thing to stand out from this particular case is that the Japanese legal system does have a procedure to intervene where a parent does not recognize a domestic custody decision. In much of the coverage of abduction cases, you often read how the police are reluctant to become involved in family quarrels and certainly won't enforce court-ordered visitation rights. There has also been the suggestion that they wouldn't arrest a non-compliant parent who refuses to return children to the other parent when they are granted sole custody. This case shows that arrest and prosecution is possible, even when the child is not available to be returned, albeit that the police did not accept her complaint until 2004. I'd be interested to know if police have arrested and prosecuted a Japanese father in a similar case. Perhaps they have. What it does at least show, is that Japan won't have to see so much of a revolution in the way the law is applied if the country signs Hague. The crime of parental abduction is clearly recognized. Hague doesn't even require that a parent be prosecuted, only that the children be returned.

The only problem there is that precedent means nothing under Japanese law.
Everything is a case-by-case matter, which in effect means that the law is not applied equally to all.

[Mulboyne]

[Cyka UchuuJin]

in the first case, we all know that any chance to prosecute a chinaman is jumped on because everyone knows no one will raise an eyebrow about it.

as for the sakamoto case, i think there's a lot of japanese couples within japan that try this and do end up getting sent down for it.