A mother in Zhejiang province has attracted international attention after she hid her 11-year-old son from his father for five days, a hoax she thought would test his love for the family. The 33-year-old woman, surnamed Chen, was arrested by police after the boy was located last Tuesday evening.
The boy’s ‘disappearance’ allegedly followed an argument between his mother and father. According to a police statement, the 11-year-old boy, identified only by his surname Huang, was hidden by his mother in a ‘tuk tuk’ and at a relative’s home while she was out ‘searching’ for him. After an investigation by police, it was found that the out-of-her-mind mother even had the boy wait in the car while she filed a fake police report last Friday.
Image via @华西都市报/Weibo
The police filing indicated the boy went missing on his way home from school.
Upon receiving word of the missing child, police immediately organized a search for the boy and began posting flyers throughout the area. A huge social media campaign was also launched and quickly attracted the attention of millions. The topic ‘Wenzhou 11-year-old boy missing for five days’ was read over 230 million times on Weibo.
Further attention was drawn to the case after the family posted a reward of RMB500,000 for anyone who could return their son, according to South China Morning Post.
Beijing Youth Daily also reported that the family released a poster that included a photo, description and last known location of the boy. Destroyed by his son’s disappearance, Huang’s father is quoted by Zhejiang News as saying: “We have searched all over Yueqing, but still no news of my son, it’s like he’s disappeared into thin air.” So distraught was the man that he reportedly could not sleep for four nights.
To the father’s relief, the boy was found unharmed at around 10.40pm on December 4 and Chen is now being held by police, who condemned her actions for disrupting social order and wasting a considerable amount of resources. Her final charges will be determined after further investigation. According to Zhejiang News, a neighbor reported that the whole family had vacated their home at 3am on Wednesday. Strangely, their current location is not known.
When Chen’s guilt was revealed and the boy’s disappearance was revealed as a hoax, netizens were understandably unimpressed. One Weibo user was taken aback, writing:
“This is really excessive, seriously. She tricked so many people who had good intentions, wasting society’s resources.”
Authorities believe the incident was the result of a less-than-healthy relationship between the boy’s parents and the fact that his father had traveled away from home a lot for work prior to the vanishing act.
With an estimated 70,000 child kidnappings occurring every year in China, the boy’s father certainly had much to fear.
[Cover image via @新浪爱问医生/Weibo]
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