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OSAKA -- A common-law couple in Osaka Prefecture who were arrested on June 30 after a 2-year-old girl was found dead in a weakened state inside a playpen at their home are also suspected to have neglected the child on a regular basis prior to her death.

Osaka Prefectural Police arrested the girl's grandmother Mayumi Ono, 46, and her common-law husband Takanori Momota, 50, on suspicion of abandonment by persons responsible for protection for allegedly leaving the 2-year-old alone at home for about 11 hours. The police's judicial autopsy revealed that the girl's cause of death was heatstroke.

The girl, Yuha Ono, had begun to live with the couple and others at their home in the city of Tondabayashi about two years ago. Momota has reportedly told police that there had been instances where the couple left the girl on her own prior to the incident, and police suspect that the neglect had been carried out on a regular basis.

In January 2020, Yuha, then aged six months old, was deemed as having been subjected to mental abuse, according to Osaka Prefectural Police and the Osaka Prefecture Tondabayashi child family center. The mental abuse stemmed from her father's domestic violence toward her mother. Around this time, Yuha began to live apart from her parents, and was placed under the care of Mayumi, who is the girl's paternal grandmother. However, childrearing issues occurred even after the girl moved in with her grandmother.

In June 2020, Yuha nearly drowned while bathing, and was sent to hospital unconscious. It was deemed that Mayumi had not been paying attention to the girl, who was less than 1 year old, and the child consultation center which was given a notice by the hospital instructed Mayumi to take safety precautions.

The center continued to visit the home for about four months in order to check up on the girl. Taking into account that she was attending day care with no problems, the Tondabayashi Municipal Government took over the task of watching over the girl.

According to the city, Mayumi had Yuha quit day care in June 2021, and explained to city officials that it was "tiring" to drop her off and pick her up at the nursery due to work. The city had not viewed this as an issue because she appeared positive about childrearing and there was nothing unusual about Yuha's state.

While the municipal government has emphasized that it held repeated meetings with Mayumi, including during tests measuring the girl's growth, it revealed that officials had not conducted home visits.

In a June 30 press conference, Hiroyuki Teramoto, head of the Tondabayashi Municipal Government's children's future office, commented, "We view this as a serious case, and will investigate whether the city's response was appropriate."

(Japanese original by Sayuri Toda, Kenta Sunaoshi and Misa Koyama, Osaka City News Department)

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