A Chinese court has sentenced six people to 11 years in prison for abusing a woman in eastern Jiangsu province who was shown chained around her neck in a video.

The video, released last January and seen by millions of people, sparked much discussion about the treatment of women and, in particular, bride trafficking in rural areas.

A man named Dong Ziming bought the woman for 5,000 yuan ($727.26) and kept her chained in a room with no sun, electricity or running water since 2017, the local court said in a statement. On Thursday, Dong was sentenced to nine years in prison for abuse and false imprisonment, the court said.

The woman, reportedly suffering from schizophrenia, was sold twice before she ended up with Dong. He fathered eight children under his control from 1999 to 2020.

But the five people who bought and sold it were sentenced to 8 to 11 years in prison for trafficking in women, the court said.

According to authorities, the woman was abducted from her village in Yunnan province, about 2,000 kilometers from where she was found. They then sold it several times, including once in 1998 for 5,000 yuan.

Authorities initially denied that the case was related to human trafficking, a phenomenon quite common in China’s province, where there are not many women of marriageable age.

China’s one-child policy, which was in place for almost 40 years until 2016, resulted in more boys being born as couples preferred them, and therefore not enough women.

This imbalance led to a large number of kidnappings of young women who were forced into marriage in villages where there were many more men than women.

Source: APE-MPE, Reuters.