OSAKA – A 34-year-old mother in Osaka Prefecture has been served a fresh arrest warrant for allegedly swindling a cooperative out of mutual aid money by starving her child to the point of hospitalization for low blood sugar in January, according to police.
Kasumi Nawata, a part-time worker in Daito, allegedly withheld giving meals to her now 9-year-old daughter and had her hospitalized for ketotic hypoglycemia from Jan. 22 to Jan. 27 in order to defraud the cooperative of 60,000 yen ($430) in mutual aid payment.
The latest charge leveled against Nawata on Tuesday came as the police suspect she had her daughter, who was 8 years old at the time, admitted to the hospital 43 times.
The child spent a combined 332 days in a hospital since the spring of 2018, with her mother defrauding some 5.69 million yen from the cooperative and two other organizations that were supposed to cover hospitalization costs, investigative sources said.
Nawata has denied the allegation, saying she had not intended to cause her daughter to develop low blood sugar and that her aid application was not about deceiving the cooperative, according to the police.
Nawata’s smartphone records during the period showed that she invited her partner on a trip, as well as a friend to a bedrock bath, the sources said.
While she did not end up following through on either of the plans, the police suspect she hospitalized her daughter to earn time for recreational purposes, the sources said.
The daughter only consumed about 700 calories worth of food, including school meals, over the three days before her hospitalization, of which for one day she ate nothing, according to the police and the health ministry.
Her calorie intake during the period accounts for a mere 12-15 percent of the daily energy requirement for a girl aged 8 to 9, which stands at 1,500 to 1,900 calories, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said.
Ketotic hypoglycemia, which is caused by lengthy fasting, presents various symptoms, including convulsion and vomiting.
Of the 43 times the child was hospitalized, 39 were at the same hospital, with charges amounting to about 40,000 yen, the sources said.
The mother allegedly used the money she fraudulently received to pay for dining out and esthetic salon expenses, they said.
The case came to light after the hospital noticed Nawata telling her child over the phone, “Don’t eat, sleep,” while she was in hospital in early February, the sources said. The girl was subsequently taken into protective temporary custody at a local child consultation center.
Nawata was served three arrest warrants between March and June on suspicion of, among other crimes, causing injury by not feeding her daughter, leading to her developing low blood sugar, as well as forcing her to take laxatives.
While she has told the police that she gave her daughter the laxatives to improve her health, the police suspect that she intended to prolong her time in the hospital so that she could receive more mutual aid payments, as the girl had no constipation symptoms, according to the sources.
