When Children Are Taught to Suspect the Parents

Religious families become Japan’s next battleground as purge moves into family life with schools turning children against their own parents

Continued from When Raising Children in Faith Turns Suspicious

In her article published by Bitter Winter 4^th June 2026, international human-rights attorney Patricia Duval addresses school surveillance and coercive counseling as part of the orchestrated purge of believers belonging to the Family Federation – formerly called the Unification Church – throughout Japan.

A generation caught between home and school

Duval illustrates the potential consequences of treating school children as potential victims of their parents’ beliefs, by referring to testimony given to the United Nations in Geneva in September 2025 by Yoshiko Nishi, a second-generation Family Federation member.

More from Duval: Japan Breaking Faith of Children of Believers

More from Duval: Japan: Abusive State to Shape Children’s Beliefs

More from Duval: Japan’s Next Step: Indoctrination of Children

More from Duval: Beyond Dissolution: A Religious Purge in Japan?

More from Duval: Religious Freedom in Jeopardy After Dissolution

Nishi described the experience of her teenage son after he encountered media reports portraying the Family Federation as criminal and received information about the organization at school. According to her testimony, the boy eventually came to regard his own parents as members of a criminal organization. Yoshiko Nishi stated,

“One of the most painful moments of my life was with my fourteen-year-old son. One day, when he went to the dentist’s office, he saw television reports branding our church as ‘criminal.’ He came home shaken. He asked me, ‘Did we do something wrong?’ I said no and tried to explain. But after constant exposure to hatred at school and in the media, he told me, ‘If you don’t abandon this church, I will cut all contact with you. You say you love us, but how can you put your children in such danger?’

His fear was real. Fear of rejection. Fear of losing friends. Fear of being denied opportunities for education or work. My sweet son now lives with paranoia and shame, afraid of his own family. This campaign is not protecting society. It is destroying tens of thousands of lives and families by branding peaceful citizens as criminals.”

For a parent, this represents a devastating reversal of the normal relationship between family and society.

See also Lawyers Desperately Hunt for Japanese “Victims”

Instead of the child receiving reassurance from parents when confronted with frightening information about their faith, the parents themselves become the source of suspicion. The child may fear that association with the family religion will lead to rejection by classmates, damage educational opportunities, or create difficulties in later employment.

The resulting psychological pressure can be enormous. A young person may feel forced to choose between loyalty to parents and acceptance by the surrounding society.

This is particularly significant in Japan because the Family Federation places considerable emphasis on family relationships. Its members often regard marriage, parenthood, filial responsibility and the transmission of values between generations as central elements of religious life.

Consequently, policies that undermine trust between parents and children can have consequences extending far beyond the classroom.

From counseling to separation?

Duval’s concerns become still more serious when she discusses proposals for temporary accommodation away from parents or other believers.

According to the material she cites, children considered to be experiencing difficulties connected with a religious environment could potentially be offered temporary living arrangements away from their parents, supposedly to provide an opportunity to “rebuild their lives”.

For critics of the policy, this represents a fundamental shift. The question is no longer simply whether a school counselor is investigating a child’s religious background. It becomes whether state-supported institutions can ultimately facilitate the physical separation of children from families because of concerns associated with their religious affiliation.

Such measures would be especially controversial where there is no independent evidence of abuse or neglect and where the principal concern is the family’s religious identity.

The broader human-rights question

Duval therefore places the Japanese controversy within a much broader framework of freedom of conscience and religion.

The central issue, as she presents it, is not whether individual children should be protected when they genuinely experience abuse. Children obviously require such protection, regardless of their parents’ religion.

The question is whether membership in a disfavored religious minority itself can become a reason for surveillance, psychological intervention, or disruption of family relationships.

For Family Federation parents, this creates a profound dilemma. They may wish to raise their children according to their own beliefs, as religious parents in other communities routinely do. Yet if schools teach children to regard those beliefs with suspicion, ask them to disclose details about their religious upbringing, and encourage them to discuss their parents with school personnel, the parents’ ability to transmit their faith is significantly weakened.

The danger, Duval argues, is that the Japanese response to the Family Federation‘s legal and political controversy could evolve into something broader than the dissolution of a religious organization. It could become a social and institutional purge in which the religion’s presence is gradually marginalized from family life, education, and the next generation.

Her appeal is ultimately directed beyond Japan. She urges UN human-rights bodies to remind Japanese authorities that freedom of religion or belief, peaceful assembly, expression, privacy, and family life apply to unpopular and controversial religious minorities as well as to everyone else.

For the parents involved, the issue is intensely personal. It concerns whether they can continue to tell their children what they believe, worship together as a family, and pass their religious values to the next generation without their children being encouraged by public institutions to regard those very beliefs – and their parents’ commitment to them – as evidence of something wrong.

See also part 1: When Raising Children in Faith Turns Suspicious

See also Lawyers Desperately Hunt for Japanese “Victims”

See also Against the Odds, Fujisawa Church Reopens

See also When Public Narrative Becomes State Action

Text: Knut Holdhus, editor

Featured image above: Caiught between home and school. Illustration: ChatGPT, August 2026.

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