Video After The Jump
BANGKOK (AP) — After 24 years of heartache & searching, a Chinese couple were reunited with their son who was abducted as a toddler outside their front gate.
Guo Gangtang and his wife, Zhang Wenge, hugged their 26-year-old son with tears in their eyes Sunday at a reunion organized by police in their hometown of Liaocheng in the eastern province of Shandong.
The story of their reunion after Guo crisscrossed China by motorcycle searching for his son & became an activist who helped police return other missing children to their parents prompted an outpouring of public sympathy & condemnation of abductions.
Guo Xinzhen, then age 2 1/2, was grabbed by a woman & her boyfriend who took him northwest to Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, the Chinese capital. From there, he was sold to a couple in central China.
Abductions of children for sale are reported regularly in China, though how often it happens is unclear.
The problem is aggravated by restrictions that until 2015 allowed most urban couples only one child. Boys are sold to couples who want a son to look after them in old age. Girls go to parents who want a servant or a bride for an only son.
Police experts found Guo Xinzhen in June by searching databases for images of people who looked like he might as an adult, according to a police ministry statement. His identity was confirmed by a DNA test.
The woman & her boyfriend, identified only by the surnames Tang and Hu, were caught & confessed to trafficking three boys. They have yet to stand trial, but potential penalties range up to death.
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