Child trafficker serving 15-year sentence given death penalty

Wang Haowen, who is serving a 15-year prison term for trafficking three children, has been punished again for the same crime. The penalty this time is death, thepaper.cn reported on Thursday.

According to the Chinese media outlet, the 66-year-old man was recently sentenced to death by the Nanchong Intermediate People's Court in Sichuan province after being convicted of trafficking additional 11 children. The sentence was combined with his previous 15-year imprisonment, resulting in the death penalty.

He was also deprived of political rights for life and fined 50,000 yuan ($6,895), with confiscation of all his personal assets, the report said, revealing that the number of children discovered to have been trafficked by him is 14.

Illicit gains that Wang made, about 199,000 yuan, have been ordered to turn over to national treasury, it said.

The report also quoted the ruling as noting that Wang should be harshly punished because of his extreme malice, particularly serious criminal acts, and the facts that his offense led to some victims' parents committing suicide, divorcing, or suffering huge economic losses, as well as social panic in multiple areas.

Facing the charge of trafficking 11 children, Wang denied trafficking eight of them during the trial and has appealed to a higher court after the ruling, it said.

Besides him, the court also gave prison terms and fines to two female partners of Wang. The pair has also appealed to a higher court, it added.

According to the report, Wang, a jobless native of Sichuan, began trafficking children in October 2001, and was first sentenced to three years in prison for the crime.

After being released, he showed no remorse. In late 2015, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for trafficking three boys from Sichuan to Shantou, Guangdong province. Each child was sold by him for 100,000 yuan. Subsequently, the Sichuan police rushed to Shantou and successfully rescued and brought them back.

Wang's trafficking targets were generally children aged three to five years old. He usually took advantage of situations where the children were alone without adults around, using the excuse of buying candies or snacks to lure the children away and then abducted them.

On April 20, 2003, for instance, Wang sneaked into Shashi district, Jingzhou, a city of Hubei province, and lured a then-3-year-old boy with food near a local park, trafficking him to Shantou. In May that year, Wang sold the child to a couple from Shantou for 16,000 yuan.