Former daycare worker arrested on suspicion of secretly filming a boy, triggered by information from the United States

Kanagawa Prefectural Police announced on the 4th that they had arrested a former childcare worker (31) from Minami Ward, Sagamihara City on suspicion of filming sexual poses and violating the Act Prohibiting Child Prostitution and Child Pornography (Manufacturing) for secretly filming the lower bodies of two boys at the nursery school where he worked. According to prefectural police, she admitted the charges and said, ``There is no doubt that I did it.'' ``When I started working as a childcare worker, I began to feel sexually aroused by young children and elementary school boys.I also felt sexually aroused by the act of secretly filming boys,'' she said.

According to the Prefectural Police Juvenile Investigation Division, the man is suspected of using his smartphone to photograph the lower body of an older boy at the time while he was changing clothes at a nursery school in Minami Ward, Sagamihara City, where he worked at around 10:45 a.m. on June 25, 2024. The man was in charge of childcare for the boy.

It is also suspected that at around 3:35 p.m. on October 9, the boy, who was in the second grade of elementary school at the time, took a photo of his lower body with his smartphone in the school's bathroom. The boy had come with his mother to pick up his younger brother and was using the restroom alone.

According to the Juvenile Investigation Division, it was discovered on May 20th that a U.S. investigative agency provided information to prefectural police through the National Police Agency that images of multiple boys were stored on the cloud of the man's SNS account.

The man's smartphone, which was confiscated, contained 64 images and 13 videos of the boy that appeared to have been taken while he was working at a nursery school between August 2020 and October 2024. Some of them reportedly used an app to mute the shutter sound when taking pictures. Prefectural police are currently investigating the approximately 20 boys whose faces were shown in the video.