Abducted children reunited with families

Four individuals who were abducted 21 years ago were reunited with their families in Huanggang, Hubei province, on Thursday.

All four were victims of human trafficking orchestrated by a suspect named Wang Haowen, who was involved in the abduction of 24 children from 2002 to 2014.

Between April and June 2014, abductions took place in Nanchong, Suining and Bazhong in Sichuan province, resulting in the kidnapping of three children.

On July 31, 2014, Sichuan public security authorities arrested Wang and five other suspects, and rescued the three children.

During the investigation, police discovered that Wang had also been involved in the abduction of 10 other children in Sichuan between 2008 and 2010.

Eventually, eight of the 10 children were found between 2019 and 2020. Two remain missing.

In 2020, police in Huanggang discovered that Wang had previously committed child abduction under the alias “Wang Wei”. Between 2002 and 2003, he abducted 11 children from Huanggang, Huangshi, Xianning and Jingzhou in Hubei.

One 6-year-old had memorized the family’s telephone number and parents’ names. As a result, the child was not bought by anyone, and was abandoned at a railway station in Huangshi. Soon the child was found by police and sent home.

After concentrating their resources, Sichuan and Hubei public security authorities located six of the abducted children in Guangdong province between 2020 and 2021.

On Dec 26 last year, the Hubei and Guangdong public security authorities located the final four children abducted from Hubei.

So far, 22 children abducted by Wang have been located.

Wang was sentenced to death in the first instance by the Intermediate People’s Court of Nanchong, Sichuan, in April last year, for the crime of child trafficking. The case is currently in the second-instance trial stage.

The ministry pledged to continue carrying out intensive investigations and to not give up on finding every abducted child.