The Tokyo Metropolitan Government and 10 municipalities in Tokyo said Monday they will temporarily shelter 18 mentally disabled people at welfare facilities in Tokyo because their guardians and attorneys claimed they have been physically and mentally abused at a Fukushima facility.

The local governments reached the decision nearly a month after the guardians and attorneys demanded protection for the 18, who have been staying at Shirakawa Ikusei En, home to 31 mentally disabled people.

"Each municipality will make its utmost effort to help you to settle into a new life," Nobuo Karino, a metropolitan official, said in a meeting with the 18 patients and their guardians at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government complex in Shinjuku Ward.

Some 26 of the charges at Shirakawa Ikusei are from Tokyo, and 18 of them have expressed a wish to leave the facility, said Hiroaki Soejima, an attorney for the 18. Workers at the public welfare facility, which has been operated under authorization of the Fukushima Prefectural Government, abused most of the disabled verbally, physically and even sexually, their attorneys alleged.

They claimed that most of the patients at the facility were given extra doses of sleeping pills starting every day at 6 p.m. so they could sleep for 12 hours, and thus cut the facility's personnel costs. The practice has adversely affected the patients' mental conditions, the attorneys said. The 18 will be accommodated at 12 welfare facilities in Tokyo for up to three months as a temporary measure, Karino said.