Man Abducted As A Four Year Old Is Finally Reunited With His Parents 20 Years After

This is the emotional moment when a Chinese father, who spent 20 years searching for his abducted son all over the country, has finally found his child yesterday.
Sun Wei was abducted when he was just four years old and sold to a family over 1,400 miles away from home. His father, Sun Zhenghua, has spent some eight months of every year searching for him ever since.

The pair finally reconnected after finding a match on Chinese police's DNA database, reported People's Daily Online.

It was September 1995 and the then four-year-old Sun Wei had just started pre-school in Liangshan, southwest China.

Even though he was so young, Sun Wei's parents allowed him to travel the half-mile journey on his own as they thought it was close enough.


However, it turned out to be their biggest mistake when he failed to return home just three days into his new pre-school life.

It later materialised that the boy had been lured away by a stranger with a handful of sweets.


  

The man, who remains unidentified, took the boy more than 1,400 miles away to a new family in Jieyang, southern China.

Sun Wei was quickly renamed and given a new birthday, although the abductee claims 'all of the neighbours' knew he wasn't a real member of the family.
He recalled that the family already had a daughter and treated him badly as he was not their own.
In this new world between neglect and abuse, the boy left home aged 14 and began to work to support himself.

He eventually ended up in Shenzhen, southern China, where he now lives.

Meanwhile, his father Sun Zhenghua never forgot his son.
Sun Zhenghua abandoned his wife, his father-in-law and his parents for some eight months of the year to travel around China in a fruitless search for his son.
He took odd construction jobs, which helped to fund his obsessive journey. He worked during the day and scoured the children's homes of every city he travelled to in the evening.
Even though the couple had two other boys since, he never stopped his search.
The local police station took his statement each time but were unable to help as he didn't have any photographs of his son.
Although Sun Wei had a new family and a new life of his own, he never forgot that he was abducted.

One day in 2014, after the encouragement of friends, he finally went to the police and told his story of abduction.

The local police commissioned a DNA profile, which was what eventually led to the father and son being matched up.
On October 14, Sun Zhenghua travelled with his wife to Shenzhen and, in a plain room of a police station, the family finally had their emotional reunion.

Sun Zhenghua collapsed into his son and could not stop crying while his wife wept on the side.
Sun Wei seemed shell-shocked by the situation. He admitted to reporters that he was confused since another family raised him most of his life and is not sure what will happen next.
It is not clear whether Sun Wei's adoptive parents will face any charges over the child abduction although it's likely the trafficker will never be found.
Shenzhen police have revealed that abducted children looking for their parents is quite rare since many don't remember their previous families.

In this case at least, the end seems to be a happy one.