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On February 8, 2019, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended a meeting of the Ministerial Council on Child Abuse Prevention Measures at the Prime Minister’s Office.
 
During the meeting, discussions took place on measures to prevent child abuse.
 
Based on the discussion, the Prime Minister said,
 
“This time, a little girl, Mia, desperately cried for help because of what was happening to her. I am left speechless thinking about how desperate this little girl must have been to gather her courage and report that.
We cannot stop regretting that the adults in schools, boards of education, and child guidance centers, who should act as a fortresses to protect children, were not able to find and listen to Mia’s tragic cry for help and save her life.
We must prevent such terrible cases of child abuse from ever happening again. Today, we compiled a set of measures based on that strong resolve.
Following this, I ask the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and other ministries and agencies to implement these measures immediately, such as the implementation within a month of the emergency safety check of children for all the child abuse cases identified, the establishment of new rules that never show the sources of the reports or related documents, putting the safety of children first, and new rules for relevant institutions to jointly engage with overbearing parents, as well as fundamentally strengthening the system of child welfare officers by increasing the number by 1,000. I want each minister, in particular, Minister Nemoto, to exert every effort towards the eradication of child abuse, with the strong resolve to implement all the necessary measures and do every possible thing, putting the protection of children’s safety first.”