Six people jailed by a Chinese court on Friday for their roles in the mistreatment and human trafficking of a woman, whose appearance in an internet video depicting her chained by the neck drew widespread outrage.
Dong Zhimin was given a nine-year sentence for torturing and imprisoning the lady illegally by the Xuzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Jiangsu province, and five other defendants received sentences ranging from eight to thirteen years for kidnapping, selling, and imprisoning the woman.
According to court documents, the woman, known as “Little Huamei” (Little Flower), is believed to have been kidnapped, sold, and given birth to eight children by her last abductor.
The first time she was abducted, she was taken from her home province of Yunnan, in the southwest of China, at the beginning of 1998 and sold to a farmer in Jiangsu, an eastern coastal province, for the equivalent of $1,180.
She then disappeared in mid-1998 before being spotted in Henan province, central China, where she was sold to human traffickers for the equivalent of $700, according to court documents cited by Chinese state media.
Those traffickers then took her back to Jiangsu later that year and sold her to Dong and his father, again for $1,180.
From 1999 to 2017, she was “basically able to take care of herself and communicate with others,” according to the court documents.
But after that, Dong kept her chained in a room without sunlight, electricity or running water.
Between 1999 and 2020, she gave birth to eight of Dong’s children and has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
The case caused uproar on Chinese social media after videos of Little Huamei chained emerged online.
Local authorities initially claimed no trafficking had occurred, but criminal charges were brought in 2022 after the central government formed a special investigative team to look into the case.