Sanae Shimomura Left Children To Starve To Get Some Alone Time

[Nell]

A 23-year-old mother who was arrested Friday after the rotting corpses of her two toddlers were found at their apartment in the city of Osaka has told investigators that she wanted time for herself, police sources said Saturday.

"I thought about a week later they might be dead," she was quoted as telling the investigators. "I didn't feel like I should return home to save them," she added.

Autopsies found that the children died around June after several days without food, although an exact cause of death could not be determined, according to the police.

Sanae Shimomura was arrested on the charge of abandoning the bodies of her 3-year-old daughter, Sakurako, and 1-year-old son, Kaede, in late June. She allegedly disappeared from home in late June, leaving her two children behind.

Shimomura, who had been moving between friends' homes, only returned to her apartment Thursday and found her children's corpses.

The police found the children's bodies the following day, after a report by a male colleague of Shimomura who had been contacted by the apartment's caretaker, the police said.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20100801a8.html

Sometimes this shit really gets to me. Look at their smiles.

 

[malq]

This is really weird.
he weirdest thing about it is there might be some sort of odd loophole in their culture that will excuse this to some degree.
I have been to japan several times and have some close Japanese friends that haven't been here long. I can bet they have a name for this type of behavior and it is categorized to normalized it. murder is murder, but it might be softened because of her reason. Then maybe not.
i will never understand Japanese culture completely.

Case in point, check out Aokigahara, the suicide forest below Mt Fuji. Once a year the government goes in to clean out the bodies hanging from trees. It's an honorable way to check out.

 

[Marv]

She had moved to the apartment in January, when she began working at a sex parlor. The apartment at which she lived with her children is used as a dormitory by the sex parlor, they said.

wtf? So there were others from the sex parlour coming and going in that apartment, but not one of them realised the two small children of one of their colleagues were starving to death in there? Those kids must have been crying, possibly trying to get out - and the mother had disappeared from the scene - but nobody thought something was hinky?


Those kids were just so adorbably cute. And they just starved to death in that apartment, surrounded by other people just getting on with their lives. fuck.

 

[Marv]

OK, scrap what I said earlier - neighbours DID report the children crying, but possibly before the 'mother' left them to die:



http://www.asahi.com/english/TKY201008010216.html

OSAKA--Two young children died after being abandoned by their mother in a garbage-filled Osaka apartment, despite repeated calls to child welfare officers from a neighbor reporting the children's cries.

The officials visited the apartment on five occasions between March and May but made no attempt to enter or contact the police.

The partly decomposed and skeletonized remains of 3-year-old Sakurako Hagi and her brother Kaede, 1, were discovered in the apartment in Nishi Ward on Friday morning.

Police said they may have starved to death and had been dead for a month or two. They were not wearing any clothes.
[...]

"I knew they wouldn't be able to survive if not given food or water. I abandoned them and killed them as a result," she was quoted as saying.

There were traces of adhesive tape on the door leading to the hallway. Police said it may have been used to shut the children in.

The reports to welfare workers were made before Shimomura said she left the apartment. Between March and May, an anonymous neighbor contacted the Osaka municipal child consultation center three times to report that children were crying almost every night.

The first phone call was made at around 9 a.m. on March 30. The woman said children were screaming "Mama, mama," via a door intercom late into the night.

Two welfare officials visited the home at 3 p.m. the next day, and again around 10 a.m. on April 1 and 6 p.m. on April 2. No one responded.

The second report came from the same woman at around 7 a.m. on April 8. Officials visited around 2 p.m. the next day but, again, there was no response from inside the apartment.

The third report of children crying came around 5:30 a.m. on May 18. The welfare workers visited around 3 p.m. that day, but were unable to make contact with anyone inside the apartment.

Welfare ministry guidelines say officials should confirm a child's safety within 48 hours of receiving a report of possible abuse.

The center's workers were unable to find an entry in the register of residents for the apartment, which was rented by Shimomura's employer. They said they were unable to contact relatives because they did not know who lived there. They did not contact the police.

Officials said the situation did not seem urgent because they had not heard any calls for help or had any report that children were being abused.

They did not talk to neighbors to further investigate the reports because they were "concerned that would sour relations with the guardian."

The chronology of the children's deaths is unclear but they may have died after the reports to the welfare office. A neighbor said the children's cries had stopped about a month ago and a man living next-door said he noticed a bad odor coming from the apartment in July.

Some experts say the welfare officials could have saved the children following the reports from neighbors. Under a change to the law in April 2008, child guidance center officials can get a court warrant to enter a home to protect a child without a guardian's consent.

But, in fiscal 2008, the step was taken in only two out of 42,664 cases in which officials dealt with reports of abuse. It was only taken once out of 44,210 cases in fiscal 2009.

Some officials in urban areas say applying for the warrants is complicated and time-consuming and often not practically possible given their heavy workloads.

Tetsuro Tsuzaki, a professor of child welfare at Hanazono University, said the current system should be reviewed because its "hurdle is too high." But he questioned why the officials involved in the case had not collected information by talking to neighbors or asked the apartment's janitor to give them access.

http://www.phunuonline.com.vn/2012/Pages/bo-con-chet-doi-mot-phu-nu-nhat-bi-phat-30-nam-tu.aspx

 

[biteme]

WOW! all those rules, all that incompetence by welfare officials, almost seems like child welfare draws the most incompetent personalities worldwide
And they always seem to have a phobia about contacting neighbors or relatives
They may know something, better avoid them or it'll add to the workload

 

[Bohring]

This story has left me absofuckinglutely livid. That girl was 3. My 3 year old knows how to get his own food and water. I wonder if those kids, indeed, were alive that long because the 3 year old was making do for her and the baby.

 

[Morgana]

I'm overwhelmed with bad emotions right now! It's hard, we as parents know when our kids are hungry or thirsty how persistent they are and the look they cry out with on their faces. To see those beautiful pictures and know they starved --is braking me today! They were together as siblings, suffering together, crying together, dying together...and both too young to understand.

The selfish bitch who bore them is a coward. She stayed gone long enough to ensure their deaths, slow deaths at that. Also, leaving and having toddlers suffer and die without actually SEEING their mother, allowed her a sense of peace to escape blame in her mind because they died calling out for her, she didn't witness it, and the children didn't know she was such a cowardly, heartless monster. This crime served her mentally. She couldn't begin to know what I personally think she deserves physically!

Food and water. Basics. You bring life here, you MUST provide the basics. If you can't, get help or let someone else take care of your children, or....ensure YOU DO NOT BRING LIFE INTO THE WORLD! (my personal favorite) I hate the fact, AGAIN, people knew there was a bad situation yet no help came. How much crying was there, how much did people know, what was really heard or ignored? Could this have been prevented? We don't have the facts. Only dead children.

 

[malq]

I'm overwhelmed with bad emotions right now! It's hard, we as parents know when our kids are hungry or thirsty how persistent they are and the look they cry out with on their faces. To see those beautiful pictures and know they starved --is braking me today! They were together as siblings, suffering together, crying together, dying together...and both too young to understand.

The selfish bitch who bore them is a coward. She stayed gone long enough to ensure their deaths, slow deaths at that. Also, leaving and having toddlers suffer and die without actually SEEING their mother, allowed her a sense of peace to escape blame in her mind because they died calling out for her, she didn't witness it, and the children didn't know she was such a cowardly, heartless monster. This crime served her mentally. She couldn't begin to know what I personally think she deserves physically!

Food and water. Basics. You bring life here, you MUST provide the basics. If you can't, get help or let someone else take care of your children, or....ensure YOU DO NOT BRING LIFE INTO THE WORLD! (my personal favorite) I hate the fact, AGAIN, people knew there was a bad situation yet no help came. How much crying was there, how much did people know, what was really heard or ignored? Could this have been prevented? We don't have the facts. Only dead children.

That reminds me, i have to feed the North Korean kids in my basement. I gave them water a few days ago. Disposing of bodies, even North Korean ones, is becoming increasingly difficult.

 

[malq]

Some officials in urban areas say applying for the warrants is complicated and time-consuming and often not practically possible given their heavy workloads.

I may be wrong, but I think this is translated as we don't get involved in peoples business to embarrass them unless absolutely needed. How much more necessary can it get? the probably don't have provisions for this sort of thing.

 

[AngelFire]

I don't know what else to say other than I am so heart broken. Those sweet faces were once smiling little chubby babes....*sigh*

 

[LadyCygnet]

I look at those sweet little faces and think, "How could anyone be so heartless as to leave those two little ones to die?"

But then I remember that this is the Dreamin' Demon, and if anything, we've been able to shine a light on the horrors of the world, on the heartless parents who would do such a thing. And those of us who are parents and those of us who love children recoil in horror and take out our fury on the heartless bastards who allow the children they are supposed to love and protect and nurture to suffer such cruelty.

If bringing crimes like this out of the shadows and into the light has saved at least one child's life, it has been worth it to be subjected to the pain and grief that these lost and abused children have experienced.

 

[Silvahalo]

Pictured 3yo, Sakurako Hagi.​

I couldn't find the the other story just like this somewhere in Europe, woman does exactly the same thing (2 babies) for exactly the same reason. It haunted me for ages as I came across other similar stories. Changed me.

"I got sick of feeding them and giving them baths."

I imagined that this 3yo was completely unaware that her mother was leaving them to die, promised a quick return with snacks, anxiously awaited mama's return as she played with her 1 yo brother. Mama didn't return just as the sun set and they fall asleep in a restless, whimpering sleep. People heard them cry someone came but does not enter, no one helps even on several returns.
Sun comes up then down again big sister raids the fridge feeds baby brother as best she can. Soon there is nothing they can reach and the water no longer staves the hunger.
Soon baby brother no longer cries and doesn't look right big sister lays by him in attempt to comfort and sooth, but still no cries. Not a stir. Sakurako dies heart broken, alone and still loving her mama believing still then, as she closes her eyes for the last time. There are no dreams for Sakurako only nightmares as they consume her last breath....fitful nightmares. Only it's not a nightmare.​

"I got sick of feeding them and giving them baths."

​

I got sick reading this. Sick thinking there are POS like this out there who on one day up and leave their living, breathing, loving children for "alone time". You got what you wanted Sanae Shimomura, you disgusting, filthy cunt. No more children to cramp your whoring ways. IF I had a chance I'd spit on you.​

I hope justice is served, and the useless welfare service also held accountable. This used piece of flesh deserves the same as she gave. With some luck someone who finds her a fetid, vile sight will do society a favour and see her dead.

Rest in peace precious children Sakurako Hagi and baby brother Kaede.​

Breaks my heart a thousand times over.

 

[Tundratot]

The first phone call was made at around 9 a.m. on March 30. The woman said children were screaming "Mama, mama," via a door intercom late into the night.

I think it's safe to say she left them alone every night when she went to work.

Maybe in Japan the standards of care of children are different than in the West. Leaving them alone while working may have been excusable. That may even be why the social services didn't pursue the matter very hard. If the baby wasn't hanging out the window, there's no danger. Why get everyone mad by interviewing them? Why cause trouble and strife? The Japanese character is very introverted and private, I believe, so they wouldn't welcome the social services people, although the one who called probably would have.

I have read that the Japanese used to have a customary form of suicide wherein mothers would take their kids and walk into the sea. I think that means that a woman takes on full responsibility for her children. If she dies, they have no one. If she rejects them, they have no one?

But one last thought here, was there no father in the picture?

 

[biteme]

I think it's safe to say she left them alone every night when she went to work.

But one last thought here, was there no father in the picture?

Maybe many fathers

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20100801a8.html
She had moved to the apartment in January, when she began working at a sex parlor. The apartment at which she lived with her children is used as a dormitory by the sex parlor, they said.

 

[Silvahalo]

The skies grew darker as the light grew dim then gone.
The Heaven's brightened ever more with light anew
by the names Kaede and Sakurako.
Brother and sister hand in hand always.
angel kisses....


​

 

[VAS1326]

I don't think all Japanese people are this way. I knew a Japenese woman who married a Sailor she met while he was in Japan. She spoke little English and was a meek woman. She was a wonderful mother to her young children. She always had them clean and looking cute as buttons and walked her older child to the bus everyday. After I had my 2nd child she insisted I not bring him out on the chilly mornings and would also walk my daughter to the bus stop. She was like a hawk watching her children. She lived for those kids. So I don't think it's the norm for parents to be so selfish in Japan.

That being said, what this mother did was nothing short of cruel and attrocious. Even now she still doesn't seem to give a flying fuck that her kids are dead. I mean I need alone time too (and here I am at midnight on D.D. on my laptop in the basement getting said alone time while my children are all in their beds with full bellies) I think every parent feels like they need some alone time especially with toddlers (who won't let you pee by yourself) but that usually means taking a bath or reading a book, not leaving your kids unattened. WTF is wrong with some people? Why does any parent feel it's okay to leave small kids home alone for any period of time? This woman just gets under my skin because she doesn't seem to give a shit at all what happened to those poor babies.

 

[Jerri Blank]

I was thinking about this tonight and wondered what the hell happened to the mother - it took some digging but I found it, it also pissed me off since the crime was so heinous and she was supposed to be facing life...

Woman handed 30 year sentence for leaving children to starve to death
(Mainichi Japan) March 17, 2012

OSAKA -- A woman convicted of shutting her two young children in an apartment here and leaving them to starve to death was sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment in a ruling at the Osaka District Court on March 16.

Convicted was Sanae Shimomura, 24. In handing down the 30-year sentence, the maximum for a fixed prison term, Presiding Judge Masaki Nishida described her actions as "cruel."

"One cannot imagine the pain of the children whose lives were cut short as they gradually grew weaker in a situation of despair. It can be summed up in the word 'cruel,'" he said.

Shimomura denied intending to take the lives of her 3-year-old daughter Sakurako and her 1-year-old son Kaede, but the presiding judge ruled that when she last saw her children at her home on June 9, 2010, she was aware that they were considerably weakened and that their lives were in danger. Pointing out that she stayed out for about 50 days after giving her children just a little food, Nishida said, "She abandoned them without providing any means to save their lives."

The judge noted that the children had spent their final days amid trash and excrement, and stated: "There is no suffering rivaling this. During that time, the defendant turned her eyes from reality and pursued pleasure with several men. Her actions deserve criticism." At the same time the judge granted that there were circumstances meriting consideration, stating: "She could find no other way to relieve her weariness from childrearing amid her feelings of isolation."

According to the ruling, Shimomura left her children in her home in Osaka's Nishi Ward on June 9, 2010 in a state that prevented them from escaping by themselves while being aware that they could die if she didn't give them food. This caused them to starve to death around the end of the same month, the court ruled.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/...na011000c.html

Heres' a page of search results using the Japanese characters of her name:
http://sitesearch.asahi.com/.cgi/sitesearch/sitesearch.pl

Sanae Shimomura

It's hard to imagine someone this beautiful being so fucking evil,
She is truly disgusting!

 

[AngelFire]

While 30 years may not seem much. I am just hoping that with in that time, she meets a horrid death. One that makes the way the babes died, seem humane.

 

[VXIII]

Well she will have plenty of "alone" time now. Unfortunately she wont have a mirror on that alone time. I will in my life never forget her comment that after a week or so she figured they were dead so what was the point of coming to check on them, hope her jailers need plenty of "alone" time also and she drinks all the water out of her toilet waiting and waiting and waiting. Godamned bitch.

 

[shiroyama mama]

I live in Japan and I can assure you that it isn't normal to go out to work and leave your toddlers alone at home.

Re. the father of the kids, she was divorced, and in Japan generally full custody is given to the mother, and generally the father no longer gets any access to the kids after divorce. It's pretty backward and sad.

I can't believe the judge considers "She could find no other way to relieve her weariness from childrearing amid her feelings of isolation." to be a circumstance worthy of consideration here. Is there any mother out there who hasn't suffered from weariness and feelings of isolation, at least at some point? Hell I'm isolated and weary most of the time. I think she was just an empty narcissistic ho who wanted to be free to spend all her time shopping, applying cosmetics and partying.

 

[Silvahalo]

"She could find no other way to relieve her weariness from childrearing amid her feelings of isolation."

"no other way". It's hard for me to wrap my mind around that comment. As a mother and mothers who read on this, we know how weary and isolated one can feel. My first 6 mo. as a stay home mother was, difficult. Suddenly detached from the people I knew and no way to get out and do things. Not exactly the first time mothering experience I had expected or planned. Never once considered abandoning my baby for any reason.

.....but then we are not reading on a mother.

Her physical beauty will soon fade to the black, dark soulless piece of flesh that she is. It will betray her as she did her children. Hang the putrid flesh on a pole for the buzzards to eat. Be done with her. Forget her.

 

[Marv]

30yrs. Good.

I saw a programme where a guy was caught smuggling cannabis into Japan. He got 5yrs forced labour, and unlike UK holiday-camp prisons where they only serve half, he served the full 5yrs. The inmates also had to work every day, and when they weren't working they had to march, march, march around the yard.

I don't know if every Japanese prison does that, or if every prison sentence automatically includes that stuff or if the judge has to stipulate it, but in my mind the 30yrs that vile bitch has been sentenced to includes exactly the same treatment as the smuggler got.

30yrs of forced labour and marching around the exercise yard - lets see the pictures of her after that.

 

[shiroyama mama]

marv, I think there is less early release, parole and plea bargaining here. So hopefully she'll serve the whole sentence. I'm sure that stretch without hair dye and make-up and fake nails will be hard on her. And her looks will no longer be as marketable when she gets out at 54 either.

The summers here are hot and humid as hell though, and I'd bet these kids were left with all the windows shut and without a fan or air conditioning, making their miserable end even more miserable.

This story reminds me of another one here where a toddler lay dead for a day, unoticed by his "mother" while she chatted online. That mother had lost one child just after birth, and another in a fall from the apartment balcony, and said that raising kids was "too much hassle". Have to wonder about all these deaths and what her role was in them.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/baby-dead-day-japan-mother-chats-net-141931399.html

 

[Abroad]

Re. the father of the kids, she was divorced, and in Japan generally full custody is given to the mother, and generally the father no longer gets any access to the kids after divorce. It's pretty backward and sad.

This is a recent development? I seem to recall reading opinion pieces in my Japanese language classes (admittedly aeons ago) about how the children were more likely to be "given" to the father after a divorce, to be brought up by his kin? :stupido3:

 

[VXIII]

This bitch needs to be taken out behind the chemical shed and shot... That baby girl was adorable.

 

[Kaylara]

I couldn't have handled hearing those kids crying like that over and over again on the intercom and not do anything about it. Charge me the price of the door, but I would have busted it down, and taken the kids to my house until the police could show up. I wouldn't have been able to hear that the whole night, even after calling the police, and done nothing to help them.

I can't even express my rage at this woman. My girls are 3 and 10 months. I'd starve before they would miss a meal. I can't even imagine leaving them home alone for any amount of time. Those poor babies. I so wish that someone had intervened and helped them.

 

[TheLittleFriend]

I have a chubby, happy one year old baby who likes to smile and blow kisses to his siblings. I cannot imagine starving them.....or leaving them for very long time. It need to have a motherfucking mean bone in my body to do this hideous thing. That woman have it. I really hope she don't sleep very good at nights.

Bitch.

 

[Morgana]

"I feel what you wrote Little Friend...my children are a little more than a year and a half apart like these two angels, the girl older...I think of how they were at 1 and 3, how my baby girl would protect her brother, hate .... hate to see him cry... to this day, they protect eachother (they are now 6 and 8). The age and closeness I see in these two children above hit home...I seen how they lived their last days together, the torment, the suffering. It kills me inside. The sadness is overwhelming.

Then I see the woman who did this, her ego, her lust, her selfishness. I want to see her suffer an unimaginable "middle age" style tortured death. What is jail? They get meals, blankets...sleep...water... No punishment can justify the atrocities commited here!

 

[Sugar Cookie]

Sakurako and Kaede Hagi