Japan father caged mentally ill son for decades gets jail term
A Japanese father who kept his mentally ill adult son in a cage for decades received a suspended jail term yesterday. While the court found 73-year-old Yoshitane Yamasaki guilty, the judge also criticised authorities for failing to help him care for his son, who had been violent towards his parents. Yamasaki, from the western city of Sanda, was found guilty of confining his son, now 42, for five years until this year. His son is now in the care of local authorities.
Yamasaki has confessed to caging his son for more than two decades but prosecutors only pursued five years of the crime because of the statute of limitations, local media said. Judge Kimikazu Murakawa sentenced him to one year and six months in prison, suspended for three years, according to a spokeswoman at the Kobe District Court. Yamasaki and his wife, who died in January, allowed their son to stay in the main building with them for about 12 hours every other day, according to the Kobe Shimbun newspaper. The couple reportedly confined their son after violent episodes.
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