Society

Man behind bars for chaining up daughters

By Jin Zhu (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-18 08:06

Beijing - Police have detained a man in East China's Jiangxi province for abusing four adopted daughters and chaining two of them up for nearly a week in an empty building.

The 38-year-old father, identified only by his surname Yang, was detained on suspicions of child abuse, the Nanchang-based New Legal Report said on Friday.

The two 4-year-old girls, nicknamed Baobao and Beibei, were found by a security guard on Tuesday in ragged clothes and covered with mosquito bites, the report said.

Above: Two girls are locked up by iron chains in a room in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province on Sept 14. Below: The two girls are dressed in clean clothes after they were rescued by local police on Sept 14. [Gu Weidong / for China Daily]

They were each shackled at the wrist by a 1.5-m chain attached to a water pipe in a bare room in the building, it added.

The girls said their father came back every night to feed them and they even urged the security guard not to unlock them out of fear of facing worse punishment, it said.

"On Tuesday afternoon, some workers found a child craning her neck and looking out from a window on the fifth floor. They were surprised because the building had only been completed a few days before and no one has moved in," Lei Cunquan, the director of a local property management company, was quoted as saying by the report.

"We were shocked to see such a terrible scene when we opened the door. The two girls were terrified and curled up in a corner when someone touched them," he said.

However, the two girls refused to be released when workers cut the iron chains on their bodies, Lei said.

"We will be beaten to death if you release us," Lei quoted one of the girls as saying. "My father locked us up here and brings us food every night. We can only be unchained when we have meals."

But both of them denied Yang was their natural father.

After local police caught Yang, they also rescued another two girls nicknamed Sisi and Lele, who are 3 and 6 years old, in a house where Yang's mother was living.

Sisi and Lele told police that Yang frequently beat them.

After being contacted by local police, Baobao and Beibei's natural parents said Yang had adopted the two girls, the New Legal Report said.

Further investigation was underway, local police said on Friday.

Yang could be sentenced for up to seven years in prison if convicted of abusing the girls.

At present, the four girls are being cared for by the city's orphanage.

"Although their bodies have gradually recovered and all of them play happily with other children, the event was very damaging to them psychologically, which will last for a long time," said Wu Jie, director of the orphanage.

"If they can't return to their homes, we will take them into the orphanage and help them find suitable foster families in the future."