[UPDATED] Netizens accuse mom of using sick daughter to raise funds, spending money on son, leaving daughter to die

The family has since responded with its side of the story, claiming that they did all they could for little Wang Fengya

[UPDATE: 05/25, 11:00pm] Since this post was first published, a number of new details have emerged about this case over the course of today which have now been placed into the story.

In a shocking story concerning China’s traditional preference for boys over girls, a mother in rural Henan province has been accused of using money that had been raised to help her seriously ill daughter to instead treat her son, leaving her daughter to her fate.

The family has denied these accusations, however, many are still doubtful that they really did all that they could to save the little girl’s life.

On May 4th, Wang Fengya (王凤雅) passed away. She was not yet three years old. The little girl had been diagnosed with retinoblastoma, a rare form of cancer that rapidly develops in the retina of young children. While kids may lose their vision or have to have their eye removed, most survive this cancer.

Claiming that her family was too poor to pay for treatment, Wang’s mother, Yang Meiqin (杨美芹), reached out to kind-hearted people online, managing to raise a reported amount of at least 150,000 yuan from donors that, following Wang’s death, wanted to know what had happened to all of that money, believing that Yang had cheated and deceived them.

Yang was accused of declining to spend much of the money on her daughter’s treatment. Instead, she was said to have used some of the funds to take her young son to a high-end, privately-run hospital in Beijing for treatment for his cleft lip.

In the wake of Wang’s death, outraged netizens called on the family to disclose the whereabouts of the donations that they had received. However, the family had declined to do so.

It certainly appears that Yang hasn’t been entirely upfront with her daughter’s donors. In fact, on April 9th, she reportedly told them that Wang had died, asking for an additional 600 yuan to pay for the transportation of her body. The little girl was later discovered to be alive, receiving treatment at a local health clinic.

This lie occurred shortly after donors visited Yang and convinced her to take her daughter to Beijing for a thorough examination. There, doctors discovered that Wang’s condition had become severe with the tumor in her eye spreading to her brain.

Yang rejected the option of chemotherapy for her daughter, arguing that it would be too painful and expensive. Instead, she took Wang back home to rural Taikang county, rather than leaving her in Beijing for continued treatment there.

Afterward, Yang denied that she had scammed the donors in any way. “The situation is too complicated,” she was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post. “I took huge blame for something I didn’t do.”

In the aftermath of accusations flying around online about Yang having neglected her daughter’s treatment and having used the funds to instead benefit her son, Wang Fengya’s grandfather has come forward to give the family’s side of the story.

The grandfather claims that when Wang became ill last September, the family launched a fundraising campaign for her which raised only 38,000 yuan — not upwards of 150,000 yuan as had been claimed. He said that after the little girl’s death there was only about 1,000 yuan left over, which he is prepared to hand over to the government.

He added that the money for the treatment for Yang’s son’s cleft lip was not paid out of these donations— as netizens had alleged — but was covered instead by another charity fund.

The family claims that they did all they possibly could for Wang Fengya, explaining that directly after her diagnosis they could not afford proper treatment for her and that by the time they had gathered enough donations, doctors told them that her cancer was too advanced and that it was already too late.

However, many still remain skeptical that the family really did all they could to save Wang’s life, noting how Yang had quickly whisked her daughter away from the Beijing hospital against the wishes of volunteers and doctors.

Yang claimed that she had already taken her daughter to many large hospitals and had been told time and again that Wang’s life could not be saved. However, the family was unable to furnish any proof of this.

Meanwhile, the way that Yang had refused to allow her daughter be left in Beijing, but had willingly taken her son to a high-grade hospital in the capital for treatment in December left the volunteers puzzled.

Still, on April 13th, they tried again to convince Yang to take her daughter to a big hospital, this time in the provincial capital of Zhengzhou, insisting that they would bear all the costs. However, the family refused and the argument ended with Wang’s grandmother beating some of the volunteers and snatching away one’s phone.

Wang Fengya would stay in Taikang county until she died about a month later, receiving free treatment at a local health clinic. On April 30th, Yang did make one last call for further donations.