A husband and wife in Yunlin County on Wednesday were each sentenced to five years in prison by the local district court for selling two of their children.
The verdict can still be appealed.
Although the couple, both in their 30s, claimed that they sold the children because they were poor, they were found guilty and handed a three-year prison sentence for one child and a four-year sentence for the other, the court verdict said.
However, after taking their economic difficulties into consideration, the court ruled that the couple should serve only five years in prison.
The money they made from selling the children would be confiscated, it said.
A man identified as Kuo Chen-kang (郭鎮綱), who brokered the sale of the two children to a man surnamed Lin (林), received a two-year jail sentence, suspended for four years.
He was also ordered to pay NT$200,000.
The charges against Lin were dropped as he had since passed away.
The couple led a hard life, with the husband doing errands to support the family, presiding Judge Wang Shao-ming (王紹銘) said.
They had four children, two girls and two boys, and were listed as a low-income family in 2015, Wang said.
They had a fifth child, a boy, in 2016, who Kuo helped them sell to Lin for NT$500,000, with the process being legally ratified as an adoption.
After Lin expressed an interest in buying a second child, Kuo approached the couple and asked them to have another child for a payment of NT$800,000.
Lin also agreed to pay the wife NT$20,000 a month while she was pregnant.
She gave birth to a girl, who Lin also adopted.
Although the couple can appeal their sentence and the wife has said that she plans to seek the return of the children, the two adoptees were to remain in the custody of Lin’s wife.
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