A 28-year-old woman who was a victim of domestic violence “until she was rescued by a support facility”.

The number of domestic violence cases in Japan continues to increase.

There are endless cases of victims and their children losing their homes due to spousal violence. Following on from Part 1: “Beaten to a pulp with a pot”… Escaping from a DV husband, we would like to look at the situations faced by such parents and their children, and the efforts being made at the frontlines of support.

0Himeka Mita ( 28 (28 years old, pseudonym)

Himeka Mita grew up as the only daughter in a father-son household in Nagano Prefecture. Her mother divorced early in life. Her father worked three shifts at a factory and was a constant drinker, so Himeka rarely spent time with her family.

After graduating from public high school, Himeka worked part-time at a local Japanese restaurant. Her hobby was chasing idols, and she spent almost all the money she earned from her part-time job on it.

Marriage was When she was 22 She was 22 years old when she got married. While working part-time at a Japanese-style restaurant and a weekend snack bar, she met a customer who made a pass at her, and when she became pregnant, they decided to get married.

Wife suffered from depression, but husband cheated on her.

Her husband was living at home and decided to take the pregnant Himeka to work at a factory in Saitama Prefecture. Although it was a part-time job, he was provided with a dormitory, so he thought he could be independent.

The following year, Himeka gave birth to their first child. Soon after, she was pregnant with her second child and gave birth to a yearling.

She got married, moved, and gave birth twice. These fast-paced changes in her life environment seemed to have taken a heavy toll on Himeka. A year and a half after giving birth to her second child, she developed depression.

At the same time, her husband began an affair with a woman he met on a matching app. He became infatuated with the woman and stayed out most of the week. When he did come home occasionally, he treated Himeka and the children badly.

Himeka recounts.

He wanted to remarry his mistress. She was a nurse, and her parents were apparently quite wealthy, so I think he wanted her for her money. So when I became depressed, he started saying, ‘Let’s break up,’ and ‘Take the kids and go back to Nagano.

But I was too sick to work, and I didn’t get along with my father in Nagano. So when I told him that I couldn’t do that right now, he gradually became grumpy and started to get violent with me and my children.”

Her husband had always had a bad drinking habit and would sometimes raise his hand to Himeka. After the couple fell out of love, he would sometimes suddenly hit her in the face or pour hot coffee on her when she was sleeping on the futon.

Himeka had no one to talk to about her problems, as she was in a strange place and emotionally ill. In her depression, she decided that she would rather die than go on like this, so she took large doses of drugs twice and finally made a plan to commit suicide involving her two children.

She came to her senses just before she was about to carry out the suicide. Terrified that she would really kill her children if she did not, she left the dormitory with a few days’ worth of clothes and her children in a light car.

The first night was spent in a business hotel, but the next day she decided to stay in the car, worried about money. With little money in his possession, he needed to find work immediately, but with no housing and two children in tow, it was hopeless.

Caught up, she entered private prostitution for 15,000 yen a time.

When she was trapped, she chose to engage in private prostitution. She would find customers online, go into hotels, and sell her body for 15,000 yen a time. She was paid about 15,000 yen per time. The price was about 15,000 yen per time.

She says, “I was sleeping in my car.

I was sleeping in my car, so I could make ends meet if I got one client every two days. While I was at the hotel, my children were taken care of at a day care center. I think it was an unlicensed place, but they kept them there for an hourly fee. I was able to shower at the hotel, but the children were not, so I would either wipe them off in the park bathroom or take them to the bath house occasionally.”

She lived like that for almost six months.

But one day, when she went to drop off her children at a day-care center, several people from the government office were waiting for Himeka. It seemed that the day-care center staff had contacted them because they were worried about Himeka’s behavior and what the children were saying and doing.

Himeka and her children were taken into custody on the spot. She and her children were then sent to a mother-child living support facility.

This look at the process by which women who are victims of their husbands’ domestic violence lose their housing will help us understand the process.

As we saw in Part 1, mother-child living support facilities protect mothers and children who have lost their homes due to domestic violence, and help them to become independent.

Most mother-child living support facilities are two to four stories high and are built like condominiums: the first floor houses the staff offices and school children, and the upper floors are the living spaces for the sheltered mothers and their children. The living space consists of several 1DK to 3DK rooms, and each household lives in its own room.

Most of the mothers living here are almost penniless or have disabilities or mental illness. Therefore, they must first receive welfare assistance to settle down and then find a way to become independent.

Takako Ueda, a mother-child support worker, says, “The mother-child living support facility is a place for mothers to live.

It is not uncommon for mothers and children who have been victims of domestic violence to be pursued by their husbands. Therefore, in order to accept such mothers and children, facilities are needed to safely shelter them.

As in the case of Orie Tsukada, some DV husbands are bloodthirsty to find their wives and children and try to harm them. In fact, in the past, many incidents have occurred as a result of this.

Safety measures at facilities that accept mothers and children who have been victims of domestic violence are very strict. Not only are addresses kept off the books to prevent husbands from seeking them out, but entrances are sometimes hidden or erased from maps. In case their whereabouts become known, many surveillance cameras are installed and the doors are designed so that they can only be opened from the inside. Only by going to such lengths could the safety of the mother and child be guaranteed.

Ueda continues.

For mothers who are running away from domestic violence, we or their lawyers will intervene in the divorce proceedings and make sure that their address is not revealed afterwards. However, there are many cases in which mothers and children who have been subjected to domestic violence have suffered severe trauma. They have become mentally ill because of it, or they have problems with their children’s emotional development. So we try to improve them as much as possible during the few years they are in the facility and help them to become independent,” he says.

The staff prioritize the emotional care of the mothers and their children before the living and financial needs of the children.

It’s a vicious cycle of domestic violence from husbands who live in a similar world.”

In the case of Himeka Mita, not only is she suffering from severe depression, but she has also forced herself to live in a car and engage in prostitution from there. At this point, various problems have arisen in her mind.

If she does not take proper care of them, there is no guarantee that when she becomes independent, her illness will recur again, or that other problems will arise from it, and she will not lose her residence. Therefore, the staff must be able to connect the mother and child to the necessary welfare, provide the utmost care, and then establish a system that can connect them to a safety net afterwards.

Ueda says, “But in reality, it’s not that easy.

However, the reality is that it is not easy. Some of the mothers are quite peculiar, and in the past, some of them have recruited other mothers they met at the facility into the sex industry or introduced them to illegal drug dealers.

Not all of them, but some of them were originally in the sex industry or were like yankees. 10 There is a vicious cycle in which mothers who are originally in the sex industry or who are Yankee-like become pregnant in their teens and are subjected to domestic violence by their husbands who are in a similar world, so there are inevitably a certain number of mothers like that.

So at the facility, we do not regulate the horizontal connections between mothers, but we do take care to prevent the spread of bad influences,” she said.

Many of the mothers had some kind of problem before they were exposed to domestic violence. Orie Tsukada, in Part 1, is a good example. That is why we need to support them in this area as well.

When I write about this, some men sometimes ask why there are maternal and child living support facilities for women but not for men. They say that mothers and children can get help, but fathers and children cannot.

It is true that this may be one aspect. However, when we interviewed people at the Maternal and Child Living Support Facility, we were keenly aware that in many cases, men abandon their spouses or boyfriends or run away, leaving the women and children alone on the street. Simply put, men can escape, but it is difficult for women to do so.

Therefore, society needs to prioritize support for such mothers and children. The Maternal and Child Living Support Facility is working to support mothers and children who have lost their homes with this in mind.

Recruitment

The series “Young Homeless” is looking for people in their 10s to 40s who have no permanent place to live. We are looking for real-life experiences of people who have lost their housing, either now or in the past, such as people living in cars, Internet cafe refugees, migrant sex workers, day laborers living in dormitories, hotel dwellers, store dwellers, and people living in support facilities, as well as the voices of those who are providing support for these people. Anonymous or other conditions are acceptable, so please contact the author.

Kota Ishii (Author)

Twitter @kotaism

Email postmaster@kotaism.com