The addresses of domestic violence and stalking victims and other such information have been mistakenly disclosed to their victimizers and others by local governments in 63 instances since fiscal 2011, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
Access to victims' residence certificates and other such documents is restricted based on support measures designed to protect victims.
The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said that it has repeatedly pressed local governments to ensure such information remains confidential, but instances of these details being mistakenly disclosed have been rising in recent years.
According to ministry officials, the support measures are intended to prevent perpetrators of domestic violence or stalking from being able to find out the addresses of their victims.
A local government that receives an application from a victim and decides after examining their situation that protective steps are necessary can restrict the viewing and issuance of residence certificates and supplementary family registers that contain address history records.
This system was introduced in 2004 in line with the Basic Resident Registration Law.
In November 2012, a 33-year-old woman in Zushi, Kanagawa Prefecture, was murdered by a former boyfriend after the city government leaked details of her address.
In June 2014, the ministry tightened measures to prevent a recurrence, including issuing a notice calling on all local governments to assign an official responsible for restricting access to documents containing such information.
However, 10 such leaks occurred in fiscal 2015, and information has been leaked in several cases every year since.
Noticeable cases include local government officials disclosing addresses to lawyers representing offenders or mistakenly sending administrative documents -- such as tax or child care allowance documents -- that contain the addresses of victims.
A record-high 18 leaks were reported in fiscal 2019. As of Oct. 30, seven such cases had been revealed so far in fiscal 2020.
This included a case in Mitaka, Tokyo, in which a local government official who received an application for a supplementary family register from an offender forwarded that document after ignoring an on-screen warning.
A Mitaka city government spokesman said the official "assumed it didn't matter if the warning appeared."
According to the ministry, 31,980 people were the beneficiaries of support measures to protect victims in 2009. This number has steadily increased since then and had more than quadrupled to 137,796 in 2019.
"We want each local government to work closely with other municipalities and strengthen their own internal systems to prevent information leaks," an official of the ministry's Administration Improvement Division said.
Police consultations hit record in 2019
According to the National Police Agency, police forces across Japan handled 82,207 consultations and reports about domestic violence in 2019, a record-high figure since the law aimed at preventing domestic violence came into force in 2001.
The police urge such victims to take temporary shelter at local government facilities and advise them to ask courts to issue restraining orders against their victimizers. The police have also given victims personal alarms and helped cover the cost of staying in a hotel.
The police make many perpetrators write statements in which they vow never to violently abuse the victim again. If perpetrators break the vow or ignore court orders, the police would actively treat the violation as a criminal case.
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