A Southern California couple used surrogate mothers to collect 21 children, then beat them daily while surveillance cameras rolled — and the surrogacy industry that enabled it asked no questions. Guojun Xuan and Silvia Zhang were arrested Tuesday at their Arcadia mansion and charged with conspiracy to commit child abuse and witness intimidation after authorities uncovered what Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman called a "house of horrors for these incredibly young children."
This is the logical endpoint of treating children as products to be purchased. Xuan and Zhang ran a surrogacy ring out of their home, hiring women across the country and lying to them about why they wanted children or how many they already had. One surrogate was told Zhang was "a single mother struggling to conceive," according to Hochman. Another, seven months pregnant, was never told the couple already had 16 children. Surrogates were paid up to $135,000 per pregnancy. The industry took the money and asked nothing about what kind of home these children were entering.
What they entered was a nightmare. The couple installed 32 motion-activated cameras throughout the home to monitor nannies' discipline of the children, who were confined to three so-called "learning rooms" — seated at desks for hours. Hochman said Xuan was captured on video laughing while a nanny forced a child to maintain a painful "horse stance," and on another occasion entered a room to instruct a nanny who was striking a child to "strike the child harder." Xuan also beat a child across bare buttocks, struck the child's head, and lifted the child by one arm while delivering blows "with sufficient force that the child's body lurched into alternating directions." One room had no cameras. Children taken inside could be heard "screaming from inside," Hochman said. The abuse was daily.
The investigation began last year after a 2-month-old baby was brought to the hospital with head injuries. A nanny had struck the infant on May 4, and the couple waited days before seeking medical attention. The baby has recovered, according to authorities.
And when the system does intervene, it can't always follow through. In an unrelated Ohio case, grandfather Gary Siders Sr., 73, had all 10 felony and six misdemeanor child endangerment charges dismissed after a psychologist found him mentally incompetent to stand trial. Siders Sr. had been held in a Vinton County jail on $300,000 cash bond alongside three other family members, collectively facing 68 felony charges after 16 children were found suffering serious physical harm inside a home on June 30. But Vinton County Prosecutor William Archer said the county agreed to release Siders Sr. on his own recognizance because his hospital care while in custody "could potentially bankrupt Vinton County." The charges were dismissed without prejudice, meaning they could be refiled — if the county can ever afford to prosecute him. NBC News framed the California case around the surrogacy deception; the Post led with the cost of justice in rural Ohio. Both stories converge on the same failure: children treated as commodities in one home, and as a budget line item in another.
Xuan and Zhang also face charges for trying to cover up the abuse by instructing nannies to lie. The surrogacy industry, so far, faces nothing at all.
