Tokyo: A Japanese girl was held captive at home for eight years by her mother, officials revealed, acknowledging that authorities repeatedly missed the abuse despite several warning signs.

The girl was first locked away in 1998 when she was just 11 and kept in confinement until 2006,when she was rescued after a neighbour reported possible abuse, officials in northern Sapporo city said yesterday.

Officials had planned to keep the case from the public to protect her privacy, Sapporo official Hisashi Okada said. But after it was reported in local media on Thursday, the officials gave a news conference.

Okada said the victim, now 21 years old, has lost all memory of the confinement a typical symptom of trauma but that the abuse has left its mark, and she is still undergoing rehabilitation. Among the effects of the abuse are intellectual disabilities: The woman only has the reading ability of a 6-year-old.

Okada said Thursday that authorities missed several opportunities to catch the abuse.

"Regrettably, we had repeatedly missed important signs, even though we had a feeling that something was wrong with the family," Okada said. "We should have taken another look and gone a step further."

The mother started pulling her daughter out of school in her third year of elementary school. In the sixth grade, she attended only one day of school and just two the following year. In 2000,she stopped attending altogether. But teachers did not suspect abuse.
Source : PTI