The mother of a 16-year-old care worker in Japan has taken the national government and Hyogo Prefecture to court, alleging that an unlawful arrest and 18 days in police custody left her daughter unable to eat until she died.
The first hearing took place at Kobe District Court on Wednesday, October 21, where the national government, which answers for prosecutors, and the prefecture, which runs the police, both asked the court to dismiss the claim. The girl, who was never charged, died in December 2025 weighing approximately 20 kilogrammes.
In a statement to the court, the mother asked why it had been necessary to detain her daughter at all, and on what grounds investigators decided to hold her. After the hearing, she said what she wanted most was still an apology for something her daughter did not do.
Hyogo Prefectural Police maintained that nothing officers did during the investigation or at the detention facility was unlawful under the State Redress Act, which governs compensation claims against public bodies. The Kobe District Public Prosecutors Office declined to comment.
The national government insisted that the request to detain the girl and her questioning were both lawful, and denied that anyone had pressed her to confess. Both defendants also reject any link between the investigation and her death.
The family is seeking approximately 110 million yen. According to the lawsuit, the girl lost approximately 10 kilogrammes in custody and was later diagnosed with acute stress disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The case dates back to a Valentine’s Day event in February 2025 at a disability support facility in Hyogo run by the girl’s family. When a service user, a woman with a severe intellectual disability, tried to bite another user, the girl and a male colleague stepped in.
Another person with an intellectual disability reported it to the city office as possible abuse. On June 17, 2025, police in Akashi arrested the girl and her colleague on suspicion of assault, alleging she had pressed the woman’s jaw several times with her palm.
According to the lawsuit, police questioned only the person who made the report, although 35 people were at the event. That person has since said she exaggerated, and that the girl had only rested a hand on the woman’s jaw.
The girl denied the allegation and was barred from seeing anyone but her lawyer, including her parents, while the court twice extended her detention. In a notebook kept in the cell, she recorded interrogators telling her to admit it, and the family says she was asked whether she wanted to go to a juvenile training school.
She stopped eating and collapsed from dehydration in custody, and prosecutors decided not to charge her the following day. She never recovered and died of severe malnutrition on December 14, 2025.
The family’s lawyers want the recordings of her interrogation disclosed. The mother has also urged police and prosecutors to confront what is known in Japan as hostage justice, in which suspects who deny an allegation are held for longer.
Lawyer Tomonori Takahashi, who is not involved in the case, explained that detaining a 16-year-old is unusual outside serious crimes such as murder or sexual offences, so the court will have to examine whether the arrest was necessary at all.
It will also have to decide whether the detention caused a death that came approximately five months after her release. If it reaches that question, other possible causes and the medical care she received are likely to be examined, Takahashi said.
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