Woman gets 3-year sentence for raising abducted child for 35 years, sparking public fury

A court in Beijing has sentenced a woman in her 50s to three years in prison for abducting a baby boy and raising him as her own for 35 years. The woman, identified only as Wang, had been working as a nanny for the child's family when she disappeared with the 10-month-old in March 1990.

The child's parents searched for him across China for years but were unable to locate him. Last year, police contacted the family, confirming through DNA and national databases that a man known as 'Xiaoyong,' now in his mid-30s, was their long-lost son. He had lived his entire life believing Wang was his mother.

“

The child's parents suffered the pain of separation from their child for over 30 years, but the nanny will only serve 3 years? It should have been life imprisonment. That's how similar crimes can be prevented.

Wang was prosecuted for child abduction. The court determined that her actions constituted abduction rather than human trafficking, as she did not profit financially from selling the child. Under Chinese law, human trafficking carries a minimum sentence of five years, with a maximum of the death penalty, while child abduction has a maximum sentence of five years.

The relatively light sentence has drawn widespread criticism and public anger. Many netizens argue that the three-year term is insufficient compensation for the decades of suffering endured by the biological parents and the irreversible impact on the son's life. Commenters expressed outrage that the woman might serve only three years while the parents were separated from their child for over three decades, calling for harsher penalties to deter similar crimes.

“

The man's life, who could have grown up in a wealthy family, was irreversibly changed, and the sentence seems too low compared to that.