Monday, 22 July 2019

Daughter's tearful reunion with parents 30 year after she was abducted and sold


Kidnapped, sold to another family and given a new name. Moving photos show the 33-year-old woman and her parents - Tang Weiqi and Tang Shuqin - hugging for the first time since she was abducted at age three in February 1989.
The daughter, who was renamed Wang Shanshan by her new family, said: "Mum, I've been looking for you forever."
The Tangs said they allowed their daughter to go with an acquaintance and serve as a flower girl at a wedding.
But the girl vanished and her devastated parents spent the next three decades without her, fearing she would never be found and they would never find out what happened to her.
Shanshan was living more than 300 miles away after being kidnapped and sold to a new family.




The couple, from the town of Sihushan in China's Hunan Province, were finally reunited with her after she was tracked down by police and a not-for-profit group called Baobei Huijia (Baby Back Home).
Shanshan's search for her biological parents began in 2009 after she saw a news article about how a family was reunited with their long-lost child after more than 20 years.
She contacted Baobei Huijia and started travelling neighbouring provinces such as Sichian to find them.
She recalled: "I gave my DNA to the authorities on three occasions, and the police asked me to be patient.
"I had such a strong urge to find my parents, but I knew there was little hope."
The news she was waiting for arrived in May, when any-trafficking investigators matched her DNA with those of her biological parents, who had also supplied authorities with samples in the hope of finding their daughter.
Shanshan, who now lives in the city of Shaoguan, said: "On 5th July, Yuanjiang police notified me that I could meet my parents the following week. I didn't sleep for a week.
"In the past 30 years I hadn't set foot in Hunan [Province] once, and I had no memories of my parents."
Images of their reunion on Thursday show Shanshan unable to hold back her tears as she hugs her mother for the first time since before her abduction.
Yuanjiang police have revealed that between May 8 and 13 they arrested three male suspects and one female suspect, who they say acted as intermediaries in the sale of Shanshan to her now deceased foster father.
The main suspect, however, has not been arrested.

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