A California couple is coming under fire after child abuse allegations have come to light. After one of their children was admitted to the hospital with a serious injury, police learned that the couple had 21 children in their home. It turned out that the couple, Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan, had many of the children via surrogacy. The couple was allegedly running a surrogacy company, hiring women to have children for them. Now, the children are all in the care of Child Protective Services, and the women who were surrogates for the couple are left asking a lot of questions.
On May 7, 2025, officers from the Arcadia Police Department were alerted to a 2-month-old boy admitted to the hospital with traumatic head injury and intracranial bleeding, People reported. Surveillance footage the police obtained showed a nanny employed by the parents, Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan, “violently” shaking and hitting the infant on May 5, a press release from the police said. The infant wasn’t taken to the hospital for two days.
Police then showed up at the couple’s multimillion-dollar home. There, they allegedly found 15 children in the home ranging between the ages of 13 years and 2 months. Officers found another six children at other homes in Los Angeles County. At least six nannies were also in the home.
“The majority of the kids were probably within the 1- to 3-year age range,” Arcadia Police Lt. Kollin Cieadlo told People.
Zhang, 38, and Xuan, 65, were arrested and charged with felony child endangerment/neglect. They have since posted bail. An arrest warrant has also been issued for 56-year-old nanny Chunmei Li. However, her whereabouts are currently unknown.
“The discipline, both verbally and physical, was severe to the point where it supported the beliefs that child abuse was occurring inside the home,” Cieadlo told KABC.
According to Cieadlo, the couple ran a surrogacy business and many of their children were birthed by surrogate mothers.
“We don’t believe that she birthed all these children, the age range would make it impossible. There’s just too many and too close in age for her to have done that. We do know that at least a few of the children were born through surrogacy,” Cieadlo said.
It is believed that the couple has surrogates all over the country. Over time, the women began to communicate with one another and discovered that they had overlapping pregnancies. One of them is Kayla, a 27-year-old woman from Texas. She was paired with the couple through Mark Surrogacy. It turns out that the address for Mark Surrogacy was the couple’s home.
Kayla found out that the child she gave birth to in March was now in the care of Child Services. “It was something I never would have expected to happen — something almost unbelievable unless you’re living it,” she told KTLA.
Kayla said the FBI interviewed her in relation to the case. She is now fighting to get custody of the child she gave birth to and has created a GoFundMe to help those efforts.
Kallie Fell, executive director of the nonprofit Center of Bioethics and Culture, is working with Kayla. She believes Zhang and Xuan had nefarious reasons for having so many children.
“That to me smells of trafficking, child trafficking,” she told KABC. “What are the intentions of having that many children at home through these assisted reproductive technologies?”
Perla, a 31-year-old surrogate from Florida, also spoke with KTLA about the situation. “It’s very devastating and really bad for these kids,” she said. “It’s shocking. I knew something was wrong with my situation — I just couldn’t put two and two together.” Perla went into pre-term labor and spent a month in the hospital after her delivery resulted in a stillbirth.
She said the couple was unresponsive during pregnancy complications and delayed filing crucial paperwork during the delivery. They also never came to pick up the child’s remains.
The case remains under investigation. There is no word about what comes next for the couple.
