Woman sentenced to death for trafficking 17 children

Yu Huaying, a woman who abducted and trafficked 17 children for financial gains between 1993 and 2003, was sentenced to death by a court in Guizhou Province on Friday after a retrial.

The court also stripped Yu of her political rights for life and ordered that all her personal assets be confiscated.

According to the court, the 17 victims, who came from 12 families, were abducted by Yu, Gong Xianliang and Wang Jiawen in Guizhou, Chongqing and Yunnan and then sold in North China’s Hebei Province.

Gong died during the course of the case, and Wang, Yu’s husband, was sentenced by the Guiyang court to 16-and-a-half years in prison on Friday.

The case aroused public attention in June 2022 after police in Guiyang, capital of Guizhou, received a report from a woman who had been abducted 27 years earlier. Yang Niuhua, 33, was snatched by Yu in Guizhou and taken to Hebei in 1995 for the sum of 3,500 yuan (US$480).

In June 2022, Yang went to Guiyang police to provide clues about her abduction. Yu was soon captured in Chongqing. She was prosecuted in February and the court heard her case in July.

In September 2023, Yu was sentenced to death by the court for abducting and trafficking 11 children. Yu immediately submitted an appeal against the ruling.

In November 2023, the Guizhou Provincial Higher People’s Court held a second-instance trial and, in January 2024, ordered a retrial of the case after the police discovered that Yu was implicated in more child trafficking cases.

The number of children involved in the high-profile trafficking case has since risen from 11 to 17.