9-year-old girl beaten by man on way home from school in Yokosuka

lock this animal up and throw away the key! attacking a 9 yr old girl?? What a spineless coward. Bet money a worm like that would cross the street if he saw one of us.

I'm not sure if "beaten" is the right word, but in any case I hope the young lady is okay and they catch this coward and lock him up.

Japan has this backwards rule of forcing young schoolkids to walk to and from school without their parents or a ride home. Of course this makes young kids a target for all these sickos and nutjobs with problems. Its 2016 Japan. Drop the "character strengthening" BS if we cant controls these lunatics, or 80 year olds crashing their cars into people.

What a big man, sneak up behind a little girl and crack her in the head. Smith is right this guy's a coward. Why did he pick a little girl as a target, because he didn't want to get his @ss kicked.

What is wrong with some people... do they wake up one morning and decide to clobber a little girl with a blunt object? What thought processes lead a person to carry out that action?

This attack on parents allowing their kids to walk home from school on their own is like blaming them for the attack... why? more than 95% of the time kids walk home on their own without any incident... this is an abnormal incident. The guy that did this is obviously a nutter and needs to be caught - concentrate on that and stop blaming the families of victims

There's nothing wrong with kids walking to and from school by themselves or with friends. I did it, why can't my kids? Sure, there are crazy people out there and isolated incidents like this, but you could just as easily be involved in a car crash while driving them there or picking them up. I think it's good for the kids actually as it teaches them a bit of independence, plus it's good exercise.

Sakura Cowboy: "There's nothing wrong with kids walking to and from school by themselves or with friends."

Independence and exercise I am all for, and I agree there's nothing wrong with them walking with friends. Alone? Well, I'd ask the parents of kids who have been kidnapped and maybe even murdered about that; especially the cases where no one around saw anything that happened, saw the kid in a different spot than the suspected kidnapping hours before, etc. It's a sad state of affairs, but I think walking alone for kids should be out of the question, especially in areas with few people and/or traffic.

Hope the girl is OK. She must be traumatized. . . Sigh

This is why I wouldn;t bring up my child in Japan - too many child predators whether it violence or sexual.

These kind of freaks appear way too often in Japan! I hope the girl recovers and she is not too traumatised by this cowardly psycho. I hope even more so that, this freak was caught on camera and the cops can nab him quickly (and beat the crap out of him at the station).

more than 95% of the time kids walk home on their own without any incident...

I'd bet it's closer to 99.9% of the time if not even higher. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of kids walk to and from school every single day without incident. You rarely hear of anything happening.

My favorite granddaughter, and the one I love most in this world, is 9 years old and walks to and from school. Fortunately, her school is just around the corner and it only takes her a couple of minutes to walk home.

The world is safer now than ever before, at least in our comfy G-7 countries. "Stranger danger" is hyped in the media and on social networks, but is so ridiculously rare that it doesn't bear worrying about. Of COURSE kids can go to school without adult supervision. Of course kids can go to a park and play alone, or to a shop and buy some sweets. There aren't legions of creepy pedos lurking on every corner, hiding behind every bush. Kids can handle a bit of a challenge and will feel better about themselves if they aren't constantly hovered over and "protected".

Japan seems so crowded to me its a wonder there were no witnesses or no one willing to follow the perp. In the states someone would on an individual like white on rice. Not criticizing but just wonder did not anyone witness? Need to find this person for public safety..

This is why I wouldn;t bring up my child in Japan - too many child predators whether it violence or sexual.

So where do you figure is safer?

This is why I wouldn;t bring up my child in Japan - too many child predators whether it violence or sexual.

Why? Japan is quite safe regardless of these kinds of incidents. You make it sound that nutters only exist in Japan.

This is why I wouldn;t bring up my child in Japan - too many child predators whether it violence or sexual.

This comment makes me wonder where this crimeless paradise that you are from is.

Personally, one of my favorite parts of school was the walk to and from it.

As to this creep who picked on an innocent child, I hope he is caught quckly and that the harm he did to this child is neither physically nor psychologically permanent.

This is why I wouldn't bring up my child in Japan - too many child predators whether it violence or sexual.

Yes, there are loonies here too. But I think my kids are far safer here than in most Western countries I am familiar with. I'm glad this girl avoided a much worse injury, and I hope they find this guy and throw him off a roof.

This is why I wouldn;t bring up my child in Japan - too many child predators whether it violence or sexual.

Yeah, I have to agree with Strangerland on this one. There are violent and sexual predators everywhere. However, because Japan is a relatively safe country (if you are a middle aged man and not at home) these kinds of incidents involving psychos picking on the defenceless tend to stand out from the crowd of other crimes due to being an all too regular occurrence.

Society needs protection from these freaks, but how do we achieve that? More surveillance cameras? You could hardly have one on every street corner, I suppose. I wonder if there were any witnesses.

Don't know why somebody would thumbs-down my comment about my granddaughter, it's all true. Was it because I forgot to mention that it's a well-lit street street with wide sidewalks, guardrails, and plenty of witnesses traveling to and fro?

I walked a mile each way to school. [ Up hill both ways]. Rain, snow or on sunny days. Usually with others, but not always. Never occurred to me or those others to feel any degree of apprehension, but that was 70 years ago when the world was safer.

With regards to what this man did to this poor girl, I would think that "assaulted" is a more appropriate word than "beaten" .

As for whether or not she should be walking by herself, stranger kidnappings are extremely rare, as are assaults on children by strangers. The sad fact is that for children, the possibility of physical harm comes more from family members and other people that the child knows than it does from strangers.

The knee-jerk reaction is to say that the world is much more dangerous now but the reality is that the world was not safer 70 years ago. 70 years ago we didn't have a 24/7 news cycle with the need to sensationalize any story deemed mildly interesting to its audience and to keep that audience in fear and on edge. We also now have better police/investigative techniques and, in general, a greater awareness of reporting crimes and missing persons. Awareness of child abuse and domestic abuse has increased. On a greater level, road deaths have decreased, we (Japan) are not at war, accidental and industrial deaths have decreased, water and food is generally cleaner/safer and medical advances save more lives than they did 70 years ago. That you "felt" safer 70 years ago is not relevant to the reality of whether or not the world was really any safer than it is now. That you feel the world was safer is due to your having experienced a happy and perhaps incident-free childhood, a lack of awareness with regards to incidents occurring around you, limited media coverage of any such incidents, an idealized, romanticized view of the past and or just a bad memory.

Nothing wrong with walking to school, my son did it here

As did I back home, once primary school was done(after 4yrs) we all had to catch a Tram on our own as the new school was a few klicks away.

Parent dropping a kid of, we would die from embarrasment.

Hope she recovers soon

If, one assumes that no person commits an act for absolutely no reason at all...what could possibly have been the reason for this attack?

To be sure, the person is a lunatic, but..even so, if he derives some sort of perverted pleasure from hitting 9 year old little girls on the head...then "pleasure" was the reason why she was attacked. Could that have been it?

I think there's no point in trying to understand why somebody did this. He's obviously not right in the head, so those of us who are cannot think the way he does and won't be able to understand. It's probably a good bet that he doesn't understand either, just knows he wanted to and then acted on it..

StrangerlandJAN. 24, 2017 - 06:25PM JST

This is why I wouldn;t bring up my child in Japan - too many child predators whether it violence or sexual. So where do you figure is safer?

Most of the developed world - people need to get it out of their minds that just because Japan has a low petty crime rate does not mean all crimes in Japan are low. My sister in law was sexually assaulted as a child in a local park - she never told anyone about it until recently (now in thirties) and I know from various newspaper reports that sexual assault is severely underreported in Japan due to culture barriers, and we know there is a serious problem with sexual assault on trains. Is it such a leap of logic to conclude that sexual assault on children is a more serious problem in general in Japan?

No way would I let my daughter spend more than a few weeks holiday in Japan. To those parents allowing their daughters to come home from school alone - shame on you for taking the risk because like my sister in law, your daughter is unlikely to ever tell you if someone attacked her.

I somehow feel that this blame will get shifted and blamed on a military person. Because we know how some older people jump to conclusions to make people believe that the US military shouldn't be here.

Moderator: You're the only one mentioning that. A very poor contribution from you.

I hope the little girl is okay. Horrific for anyone but at her age? Horrible.

As I was walking to work today, I passed a private kindergarten bus full of students and teachers. It was stopped in traffic, and some older man was standing next to it just staring in at the students for a long time. Not waving or smiling or talking just staring. I stopped to watch him because it creeped me out.

Seriously don't think that "beaten" is the right word. More like "hit". Anyway, the guy is a dirtbag. I hope they find him and wish that they could send him to an American jail where he will be beaten.

I'll just say this. Its sad.

sensei258JAN. 25, 2017 - 12:25PM JST

As I was walking to work today, I passed a private kindergarten bus full of students and teachers. It was stopped in traffic, and some older man was standing next to it just staring in at the students for a long time. Not waving or smiling or talking just staring. I stopped to watch him because it creeped me out.

Yes, I've seen similar things myself - I think people in Japan just don't see it though. There is serious child sexualisation everywhere and this only feeds sexual deviation which is higher than it should be. Parents for your children;s sake, do NOT allow your children to walk home alone, no matter where you live - is the risk really worth it?

Parents for your children;s sake, do NOT allow your children to walk home alone, no matter where you live - is the risk really worth it?

It really depends on how much of a risk it is. I'd suspect, though granted it's purely an impression and not one backed by any numbers I've researched, that your kids face more of a risk any time they get into a car. In such a case, then the risk doesn't seem to be a big deal to me. Now if it turns out that the risk of a kid walking home alone is fairly significant, then I'd feel otherwise. The problem here is I have no idea how much of a risk it actually is, so I personally can't answer your question.

Up to you nothing to do with stats.

If you feel it isn't safe escort them, if you are the only parent doing so expect that your kid will get teased about it.

StrangerlandJAN. 25, 2017 - 02:46PM JST Parents for your children;s sake, do NOT allow your children to walk home alone, no matter where you live - is the risk really worth it?

It really depends on how much of a risk it is. I'd suspect, though granted it's purely an impression and not one backed by any numbers I've researched, that your kids face more of a risk any time they get into a car. In such a case, then the risk doesn't seem to be a big deal to me. Now if it turns out that the risk of a kid walking home alone is fairly significant, then I'd feel otherwise. The problem here is I have no idea how much of a risk it actually is, so I personally can't answer your question.

Okay, so because you don;t know the risk, you would choose to allow your child to walk home alone? Surely, best to assess the risk BEFORE allowing them to go out alone. You can't really get far in life without a car these days - but there are myriad of ways your child can get home supervised by an adult.

so because you don;t know the risk, you would choose to allow your child to walk home alone?

I do allow my older boy to walk home, but he walks with other kids from the school not alone. Walking home alone isn't an issue I've had to face at the moment.

You can't really get far in life without a car these days

I don't have a car.

I would like to smach him in head

As I was walking to work today, I passed a private kindergarten bus full of students and teachers. It was stopped in traffic, and some older man was standing next to it just staring in at the students for a long time.

While it's good to keep an eye out for stuff like this, the likelihood was that he had a perfectly good reason for being there. A few weeks ago i saw a guy hanging suspiciously around a kids craft class in the dark. I mentioned it to the teacher, and it turned out he was waiting for a meeting that was to begin afterwards.

There could be any number of reasons an older man was staring at a bus. I keep an eye out for these people, but I keep in mind that they are most likely perfectly innocent. They don't, as Igloo implies, mean that Japan is more dangerous.

I see similar often, many older people enjoy watching kids play.

Many kids also stay with their grandparents till their parents pick them up, might be such a grandparent.