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Woman who cut off her newborn son's private parts handed 5-year prison term
Mainichi Daily News, Sakai, Osaka, Japan, November 26, 2006 SAKAI, Osaka --
A woman accused of cutting off her newborn son's private parts in 2004 was
ordered Monday to spend five years behind bars.
The Sakai branch of the Osaka District Court convicted Shizue Tamura, 27, a
resident of Izumi, Osaka Prefecture, of inflicting bodily injury.
"The way she committed the crime was unprecedented, inhumane and cruel,"
Presiding Judge Masahiro Hosoi said as he handed down the ruling. Prosecutors
had demanded an eight-year prison term.
The judge dismissed the defendant's not-guilty plea, pointing out that only she
and her son were at home at the time of the incident. However, he reduced her
prison term to five years, considering her unhappy childhood and the fact that
she was regularly abused by her common-law husband.
Tamura cut off part of the private parts of her second son, who was then 4
months old, at her home on March 1, 2004, leaving him with severe injuries that
took seven months to heal and serious after-effects, according to the ruling.
The judge asserted that the defendant directed her anger with her common-law
husband at her second son, pointing out that the man broke his promise to
recognize her second son as his own son and to pay the costs of bringing up the
victim. (Mainichi)
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