Amid the string of child murders across Japan in recent weeks, the bizarre story of an 18-year-old girl in Fukuoka Prefecture, allegedly confined almost all her life and beaten by her mother, has all but gone unnoticed.
And as Japanese media focus attention on the tragic slayings, they have largely overlooked disturbing aspects of the Fukuoka case:
* Despite domestic and international laws mandating a tough government response to suspected child abuse, and although the girl's appointed school was long aware of serious problems in her family life, officials waited eight years before notifying proper government agencies in 2002.