Detained woman is also alleged to have burned daughter’s tongue with cigarette in case that highlights rise in child abuse

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A woman and her partner have been arrested in Japan for allegedly forcing her daughter to eat 30 dead goldfish.

Yuko Ogata and her boyfriend, Takeshi Egami, killed the fish by pouring detergent into their tank, before forcing Ogata’s daughter, who was 16 at the time, to eat them one by one, media reports said.

The alleged abuse occurred last June at the couple’s home in Fukuoka in south-west Japan. The girl, who has not been named, did not suffer any damage to her health, but the incident has drawn attention to a steep rise in cases of child abuse.

The goldfish incident was part of a pattern of abuse that included tying Ogata’s daughter to her bed, striking her in the face and burning her tongue with a lit cigarette.

Egami has denied force-feeding the girl, but Ogata has reportedly admitted that her daughter was forced to eat the fish. The couple had already been arrested four times since last year for alleged offences that included making the girl eat ice-cream and eggs until she vomited.

The force-feeding is the second disturbing crime to have attracted widespread media coverage in Japan this week. On Monday, police arrested Hayato Imai, a former care worker at a nursing home, for allegedly throwing a male and two female residents – aged in their 80s and 90s – to their deaths from the home in 2014.

Child protection centres dealt with a record 89,000 cases in the year ending March 2015, according to the health and welfare ministry.

Incidents of abuse towards the elderly, including those living at home, stood at just over 16,000 – a slight increase from a year earlier – the ministry said.