After her husband was admitted to a detention center, a birth mother who abandoned her two sons, both not yet 3 years old, at a daycare center and left was sentenced to one year in prison at the first trial.
On the 16th, Shin Yun-ju, the sole criminal judge of the second division at the Cheongju District Court, said she sentenced a woman in her 30s, identified as A, to one year in prison on charges of violating the Child Welfare Act (child abandonment and neglect). The court also ordered her to complete 40 hours of child abuse treatment programs and imposed a three-year employment restriction at child-related institutions. A man in his 30s, identified as B, who hid A after she went into hiding, was fined 3 million won on charges of harboring a criminal.
A was indicted on charges of going into hiding for about three months from July 31 last year to Oct. 20 of the same year after dropping off her sons, C (3) and D (2), at a daycare center in Cheongju.
A, who has a level-2 intellectual disability, was found to have abandoned her two sons at the daycare center after deciding to divorce her husband and no longer raise the children when her husband was admitted to a detention facility for penal labor the day before the offense.
A was found to have drifted between motels around Daejeon and Cheonan in South Chungcheong Province with the help of acquaintance B before being arrested by police. B, despite knowing that A had abandoned her children and fled, provided her with shelter and meals, and told the police, "I don't know where A is," thereby hiding A, according to reports.
Judge Shin said, "The guilt is very heavy because the children, who desperately needed parental protection, were neglected and abandoned, putting their lives and bodies at risk," adding, "However, considering that, as a person with an intellectual disability, it appears she committed the crime because caring for the children alone was overwhelming, and that she has no criminal record, the sentence was determined with these factors in mind," explaining the reasons for sentencing.