HOKKAIDO (TR) – Police have arrested a 26-year-old worker at a child consultation center here over allegations of non-consensual indecent acts with a teenage girl.
The incident occurred despite the prefectural government having received a direct warning about his predatory behavior, reports Fuji News Network (May 23).
Nozomi Fukiya, an official assigned to the Iwamizawa Child Consultation Center, is accused of inappropriately touching a girl in her early teens in February.
At the time of the alleged assault, Fukiya was employed at a private facility in Sapporo. He was arrested by police earlier this month.
Received a tip
The case has sparked outrage due to a glaring administrative blunder that allowed a suspected sex offender access to vulnerable youths.
Fukiya was officially hired as a prefectural employee in April. However, in mid-March, weeks before his employment began, the Hokkaido government’s child policy bureau received a phone call from an outside source.
The caller explicitly warned that an incoming hire had committed indecent acts against a minor, pleading with officials: “Please do not put him in a position that involves working with children.”
Despite the specific and urgent nature of the tip, the warning vanished within the bureaucracy.
The staff member who received the call drafted a memo noting the abuse allegations and Fukiya’s status as a prospective hire, emailing it to a deputy section chief. But the information went no further. It was never escalated to upper management, shared with the human resources department, or investigated.
Bureaucratic excuse
When pressed on the failure during a recent press conference, Hokkaido officials offered a bureaucratic excuse. They claimed they viewed the matter merely as an “incident at a private facility in Sapporo” and assumed the caller should consult the Sapporo city government instead.
Reporters slammed the officials, questioning why they failed to act despite knowing the suspect was scheduled to be hired. The government repeatedly dodged, reiterating that their focus was on the incident’s location rather than the suspect’s future employment.
Following Fukiya’s arrest, the prefectural government pledged to overhaul its information-sharing protocols, promising that severe allegations involving abuse or sex crimes will now be immediately reported to executives and crisis management teams.
Investigations into administrative responsibility regarding the dropped warning are ongoing.
