Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Hunan Scandal Records from the Changning Orphanage

We have come in possession of two logs that originated from the Changning orphanage, and which were part of the Qidong Police Bureau's investigation of the Changning trafficking cases from 2003 and 2005. The first log, which we will call the "trafficking" log since it has an almost complete listing of the finders that brought the children to the Changning orphanage, covers between January 2002 and July 2003, and contains records of 222 children. This log terminates in mid-2003 when the Changning came under investigation for trafficking in August 2003.

The second log, which we will call the Changning "adoption" logs (because it has an almost complete listing of the adoption destination of each child), contains information on 244 children. It covers the period of August 2002 through October 2005. Nineteen children are common to both logs.

The second set of logs, covering the period of August 2002 through October 2005. As outlined above, this list contains 244 names, and seems to have been used for adoption purposes. Nineteen of the forty-nine named children on the "trafficking" logs also appear on the adoption logs below. In many cases the birth and finding dates are different on the two logs. For example, Ning Yu Bo is recorded as having been brought to the orphanage on October 17, 2002, with an assigned birth date of October 14, 2002 on the "trafficking" log (page 105, record 2036), while she is listed as having arrived at the orphanage on October 18, 2002 with an assigned birth date of October 16, 2002 on the "adoption" log (page 60, record 183). A similar discrepancy is seen in the dates for Ning Yu Die, who is listed with a birth date of October 13, 2002 and a finding date of October 18, 2002 on the "trafficking" log (p. 105, record 2042), but which were changes to October 17, 2002 and October 20, 2002 on the "adoption" log (p. 59, record 177). Twelve of the nineteen girls (63%) had their birth date, finding date, or both dates changed prior to adoption, most by a day or two, but one by almost two weeks. We go into the reason for these date changes on our subscription blog analysis of these logs.

The Duan family, the traffickers at the center of the Hunan scandal, are listed as bringing seventy distinct children into the Changning orphanage, but their total numbers are much higher given that most of the children on the "adoption" logs do not have the original finders listed.

Interested Changning families are welcome to contact us to determine if your child's name appears on the logs, and you would like to obtain copies for your records.