Woman confesses that she kidnapped her son 26 years ago

A 48-year-old woman’s conscience finally caught up with her last year, causing her to go to the police station and confess that her son was not her own, claiming that she had kidnapped him from another family 26 years ago.

Back in 1992, He Xiaoping worked as a nanny for a family in Chongqing with a 1-year-old boy. She had registered for the job with an identity card that was not her own, allowing her to abduct the child only three days after taking the position and return with him back to her home village outside of the city of Nanchong in Sichuan province, where she raised the boy as her own son.

Since then, no one ever came to Nanchong looking for the lost boy and He’s neighbors never suspected a thing; neither did her son.

He Xiaoping told the Chongqing Evening News that she was driven to abducting another family’s child after giving birth to two sons and watching them both die before their first birthday. She listened to elderly people in her village who told her that if she wanted to have kids that would survive into adulthood, she would have to raise a child from another family. She ended up naming the boy she abducted “Liu Jinxin” after her second son, who she had paid the town “idiot” 10 yuan to dig a secret grave for by a riverbank.

After giving birth to a daughter in 1995, she thought about returning the boy that she had kidnapped. However, she was too afraid of going to jail at the time. It was only after watching a television program last May featuring an elderly woman who had been searching for her lost son for decades that she finally decided to come clean about what happened, telling her son the truth and turning herself in to police.

But, so far, police have been unable to find any record of a missing child from Chongqing in 1992 who matches up with He’s story. Undaunted, she said she has made it her mission to find the family and go to jail for her crime if deemed necessary once they are found.

Recently, she contacted the Chongqing Evening News, hoping to spread the word about her search for the biological parents of her son and her quest for atonement. The paper published a story on her last Thursday, causing a sensation across Chinese social media with netizens calling for her to be put in jail, whether Liu’s real parents are found or not.

However, Liu himself does not want to see He Xiaoping imprisoned, explaining that she has always been a great mother to him and that he doesn’t really care if authorities are able to locate his biological parents, because He is his “real mom.”

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