Twenty-one little kids have been rescued from a California couple who allegedly farmed out their fertilized embryos to multiple surrogate mothers, and then hoarded the children inside a massive mansion — where they suffered repeated abuse, cops say.
Guojun Xuan, 65, and Silvia Zhang, 38, were recently found with 15 children in their Arcadia mansion. Another six of their kids had previously been moved out to other homes, WWNY 7News reported.
Xuan and Zhang own a surrogacy business, but cops say they were allegedly abusing the surrogacy program.
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Seventeen of the kids are toddlers or infants, under three years old. The oldest is 13.
All 21 children have been taken in by the Department of Children and Family Services.
Zhang and Xuan have been charged with felony child endangerment and neglect. It was not immediately clear if further charges would be mounted against them for their deceptive arrangements with the surrogates.
Police found the youngsters while investigating complaints of a two-month-old who was brought to the hospital with a traumatic brain injury.
Cops believe the baby was injured by the family’s nanny, 56-year-old Chunmei Li, who is accused of committing alarming abuse.
Cops reviewed surveillance footage from inside the home, allegedly showing Li shaking and hitting the infant. The video also showed other nannies allegedly abusing all of the children, cops said.
“The discipline, both verbal and physical, was severe to the point where it supported the beliefs that child abuse was occurring inside the home,” said Arcadia police Lt. Kollin Cieadlo.
Officials believe all of the children are the biological offspring of husband and wife Xuan and Zhang, and were primarily birthed through multiple women hired through their own surrogacy business.
But the surrogates — hired from around the country — weren’t aware they were carrying the couple’s embryos and that there were multiple other surrogates, according to police.
“Many of the children were birthed through surrogacy and then the male and female at the residence took legal guardianship of those kids,” Cieadlo said.
One of those surrogate mothers said she had no idea Zhang and Xuan were keeping the kids for themselves.
“It’s horrific, it’s disturbing, it’s damaging emotionally,” Pennsylvania surrogate mother Kayla Elliot told KABC.
Elliot has launched a fundraiser page to cover legal costs as she fights to get the baby girl she carried for the couple placed in a permanent home after she discovered the child ended up in foster care.
“These agencies, we’re supposed to trust them and follow their guidance and come to find out this whole thing was a scam, and the parents own the agency – that was not disclosed at all beforehand,” she added.
Two neighbors said Zhang and Xuan’s $4 million, 10,000-square-foot home had a similar layout to a hotel, the outlet reported.“It’s kind of set up like a hotel with a big, giant lobby, and all the rooms are like suites,” neighbor Hobart Young said.
“And like a round, what I can only describe as a hotel desk, and a gentleman sitting behind it like a clerk,” said Art Romero, another neighbor of Zhang and Xuan.
Police are still searching for the nannies involved.
Having so many kids through a surrogacy is not illegal, the executive director of the Center of Bioethics and Culture nonprofit told KABC, but could be easily seen as suspicious.
“That to me smells of trafficking, child trafficking,” director Kallie Fell told the outlet.
“What are the intentions of having that many children at home through these assisted reproductive technologies?”
Zhang denied allegations she and her husband ran a baby smuggling operation, calling the claims “misguided and wrong.”