Ex-Nursery Staff Member Accused of Child Sexual Abuse in Case Involving 25 Victims; Probe Focuses on Psychological Factors

Appeal dismissed

Former nursery school teacher Fujiwara Ryo (28), who received an eight-year prison sentence for forcible sexual intercourse, indecent assault against four girls aged 2 to 3 at his workplace, and violations of the Child Pornography Prohibition Law involving six girls aged 2 to 5 including those four, had appealed this ruling. On March 30, the Tokyo High Court delivered its judgment on his appeal.

Fujiwara entered the courtroom wearing a black sweatshirt set, a shaved head, and black-framed glasses. Even after sitting in the defendant’s seat, he appeared unsettled, looking around the courtroom and repeatedly glancing toward the spectators’ gallery. When Presiding Judge Masaki Tamura stated, “The appeal is dismissed,” Fujiwara reportedly looked up at the ceiling in apparent shock or disappointment.

Fujiwara, who had moved through three child welfare facilities nationwide and repeatedly committed indecent acts and violations of the Child Pornography Prohibition Law against 25 girls, was first arrested in December 2023.

“On December 7, a joint investigation team from the Saitama Prefectural Police Juvenile Division and Gyoda Police Station arrested Fujiwara, a former nursery school teacher from Osaka Prefecture, on suspicion of indecent assault for committing indecent acts against a girl at an infant care facility in Saitama Prefecture.

The arrest was triggered after a volunteer organization employee conducting cyber patrols on social media discovered a post containing child pornography images along with a message stating, ‘I will have work at an infant care facility in Saitama,’ and reported to the prefectural police that there is an account posting images of sexual abuse of girls. The police identified Fujiwara based on the content of the posts and his activity history,” said a social affairs reporter from a national newspaper.

Fujiwara, who obtained a nursery teacher qualification at a university in the Kansai region, began working at an infant care facility in Saitama Prefecture in April 2021. He later transferred to a nursery school in Osaka Prefecture, and then to an infant care facility in Yamagata Prefecture. After moving through three child welfare facilities, he was eventually arrested. His smartphone and computer reportedly contained approximately 1,200 indecent images of more than 20 girls, the same social affairs reporter continued.

“It was repeated in order to satisfy my need for approval.”

“Police in Saitama analyzed the illegal material stored by the defendant, identified the victims, and repeatedly carried out arrests and prosecutions.

Even during the trial that began on February 20, 2024, at the Kumagaya branch of the Saitama District Court, he was re-arrested on July 10 on suspicion of violating the Child Pornography Prohibition Law. The allegation concerned the creation and possession of illegal sexual images involving 17 girls aged five and under at childcare facilities in Osaka and Yamagata Prefectures. This marked his seventh arrest.

In total, 53 cases involving offenses against 25 girls were confirmed and formally indicted.”

Given the large number of victims, what motivated the defendant to pursue a career as a childcare worker despite studying at university for that purpose? In court, he stated:

“I was interested in infant childcare, and I admired male childcare workers who specialized in infant care, which is why I aimed to become one.”

He claimed that his decision was not based on any sexual inclination. However, it was also found that while working at a childcare facility in Saitama, he was interacting on social media with multiple accounts linked to inappropriate sexual interest in girls.

When asked what led him to sexually assault the girl, defendant Fujiwara replied, “I suppose it might have been due to work-related stress or something like that, but I’m not entirely sure,” while reflecting that the desire for validation on social media was one of the causes.

“When I posted on social media about committing these lewd acts against young girls, I received praise—comments like ‘I’m jealous’—and that fed my desire for validation. After that, I kept repeating the acts to satisfy that need for validation.”

Although Defendant Fujiwara denied the charges, claiming he doesn’t remember, images have been confirmed showing him bringing his genitals close to a sleeping girl and posting captions such as “Breeding, the best.”

While in detention, the defendant underwent a medical examination and was diagnosed with a condition referred to as pedophilic disorder. It is said that he did not have awareness of this condition when he first began working at the childcare facility. The court proceedings then moved on to questioning when he began to recognize this aspect of himself, and he gave the following testimony.

Although he said that he wanted to contribute to society

“When I first started committing these crimes, there was a conversation on social media along the lines of, ‘If you work at a nursery, you can do things like this [indecent acts], right?’ So I thought, ‘Well, why not give it a try?’ But once I actually committed the act, I derived pleasure from it—it was as if I’d awakened to pedophilia—and I ended up committing these crimes habitually.”

He then explained why he continued working as a childcare worker even after realizing he was a pedophile.

“I did consider quitting childcare if I couldn’t stop the indecent acts. However, my desire to work in childcare as a profession—rather than out of sexual desire—was so strong that I chose to stay on the job.”

Ultimately, even after changing jobs, he was unable to stop committing the crimes and ended up being re-arrested repeatedly. As a result, in the first-instance verdict on April 15, 2025, the court stated that the adverse impact on the extremely immature victims, who could not even understand the meaning of the acts, is immeasurable, and sentenced him to “eight years in prison (prosecutors had sought 12 years).” This time, his appeal was also dismissed.

At the High Court, the defense argued that only individuals with specific characteristics, such as the defendant, are sexually aroused by images of touching the genitalia of girls aged 2 to 5 or having others touch their genitalia, and that such images do not arouse the sexual desire of the general public. They contended that some of the images of young girls that Defendant Fujiwara had taken and stored did not constitute child pornography.

However, Presiding Judge Tamura rejected all of the defense’s arguments, stating, “It is clear that the general public, upon viewing these images, would recognize them as photographs of children taken to stimulate sexual desire or arousal,” and adding, “There is no error in the findings and assessment of the first-instance judgment.” He further ruled that it cannot be said that the sentence imposed in the first-instance judgment was too severe or unjust.

According to the indictment read by the prosecutor, when defendant Fujiwara committed the sexual assault, the victim wrinkled her face and moaned, trying to convey her disgust despite her young age.

Paying no heed to such signs, defendant Fujiwara continued his crimes to satisfy his own sexual desires and need for validation. What kind of person was this male nursery teacher well-versed in infant care whom he once admired?

While in custody, he studied to become a financial planner and stated that after his release, he wanted to contribute to society in a way that does not involve children, but it seems his contribution to society is still a long way off.

 

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