Are the Families of Offenders Also Offenders? — Reflections on Chapter 9 of The Atonement of Juveniles — July 7, 2026 (Tuesday ) Reiwa8 (Tanabata)

Kanon

Today is Tanabata.

Today, I finished reading Chapter 9, "Are the Families of Offenders Also Offenders?" from The Atonement of Juveniles by Tatsuko Aoshima.

As I read this chapter, one question stayed in my mind.

Should the family of a person who committed a crime also be regarded as offenders?

Needless to say, a crime as serious as rape and murder can never be justified.

The victim lost her life, and her family must carry grief and pain beyond words. Nothing can lessen the weight of that reality.

At the same time, this chapter describes how the life of the offender's older sister was also completely changed.

She had to leave high school, lost her chance to enter university through a recommendation program, leave the home where she had grown up, and cut ties with her friends.

Even after moving to a new town, she lived with the constant fear that someone would discover who she was.

The scene in which she began vomiting because of overwhelming emotional distress was heartbreaking.

When I was a high school English teacher, I met students whose emotional pain appeared as physical symptoms.

That is why her suffering felt painfully real to me.

Of course, the suffering of the victim's family and that of the offender's family cannot be compared.

This is not a question of whose pain is greater.

Even so, this chapter made me think deeply for the first time about how the lives of family members, who committed no crime themselves, can also be shattered.

The words that stayed with me the most were those of the young offender:

"My family had nothing to do with it."

He never intended to involve them.

Yet a single crime changed the lives of everyone around him.

It reminded me that crime casts a long shadow not only over the victims, but also over many other innocent people connected to the offender.

In the end, another question remained with me.

How do the families of offenders continue to live after such a tragedy?

Does society provide enough practical support and emotional care for them?

Rather than offering a simple answer to the question, "Are the families of offenders also offenders?", this chapter seems to invite each reader to keep thinking.

I closed the book with that question still in my heart.

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