Blood-curdling incident: 14 children left the house, Chinese couple arrested!

A Chinese couple in Los Angeles, California, was arrested for abusing two dozen children they had through a nationwide network of surrogate mothers.

Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman; Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan face multiple charges, including conspiracy to commit child abuse on 14 babies and young children at their California mansion, and witness intimidation, he said.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the couple made national headlines last July 2025 after authorities raided their mansion in Arcadia and took 21 children, most of whom were born via surrogacy, into state protection.

Hochman said at the press conference, "What is included in the complaint petition made public today is extremely disturbing. It includes horrific punishment, beatings and child abuse."

CHILDREN WERE TAKEN UNDER PROTECTION

According to the news, when the couple was detained last year, several women were already pregnant with the couple's children. While Xuan and Zhang reportedly founded a surrogacy agency to manage pregnancies, they did not tell some of the surrogates that they owned the company and had other children.

Child protection agencies took the couple's children into their care in May 2025 after Xuan and Zhang were arrested on suspicion of child abuse after taking one of their babies to the hospital with a head injury.

According to the indictment, most of the district prosecutor's evidence in the case consists of footage obtained from 32 security cameras placed in various parts of the house, and these recordings show the caregivers and Xuan beating the children. It was also claimed that one of the caregivers, Chunmei Li, hit the 2-month-old baby's head, and the caregiver, for whom an arrest warrant was issued, is still on the run.

VICTIMIZATION OF THE 'ONE CHILD POLICY'

Xuan's lawyer, Mitchell Krems, emphasized that the allegations of child abuse are "obviously false" and said, "My client is innocent. The guilty one is the caretaker who ran away. He is being targeted because he exercises his constitutional right to have a large family."

In an interview with the Journal last year, Zhang said she wanted to have many children because she grew up in an environment where she thought China's one-child policy was restrictive. The couple generally used Xuan's sperm and a donor egg to have children, according to documents reviewed by the Journal.

Melissa Brisman, an attorney for two surrogates involved in the case, told CBS News that it is important that surrogacy remains an option for those who need help becoming parents, but that "adequate protections must be provided for those who enter the surrogacy system." “We need to make sure bad actors don't ruin it for everyone,” Brisman said.