How a California mansion filled with surrogate children became a 'House of Horrors'

How a California mansion filled with surrogate children became a 'House of Horrors'

In May 2025, Walter, a two-month-old baby, was taken to hospital in the wealthy Californian suburb of Arcadia with a head injury. A woman claiming to be his mother told police the baby had fallen off the bed by accident, according to a police report. But the doctor treating him was unconvinced, saying Walter’s injuries seemed more like those caused in a car crash or by shaking.

Police, suspecting child abuse, searched the grand mansion where Walter lived and briefly detained his parents, Guojun Xuan, 66, and Silvia Zhang, 39. Prosecutors said the property they uncovered "could only be described as a house of horrors" — a camera-filled maze housing 14 surrogate children aged between six months and three, whom they say were beaten daily.

Authorities later found that the mansion’s address was also registered to a surrogacy agency operated by the couple and used by them to recruit multiple surrogates.

In October this year, the couple were arrested again and charged with conspiracy to commit child abuse. They deny the allegations and remain in custody. Bail is set at $20m (£15m) each. If convicted, Xuan could face up to 17 years and four months in prison, while Zhang could face up to 11 years and eight months.

The couple moved into the Arcadia mansion in April 2021. Online records show the 10,000 sq ft (929 sq m) home sold for $3.3m (£2.48m) that same year. It has nine bedrooms, 11 bathrooms and a heated pool.

Arcadia, on the east side of Los Angeles, is a wealthy suburb that local media have called the "Chinese Beverly Hills". In the latest US Census, almost 60% of residents were recorded as Asian, mostly Chinese. Household incomes there are far above those of most American families.

Xuan and Zhang’s 10,000-sq-ft mansion in affluent Arcadia, California had motion-activated cameras installed throughout, prosecutors say.

"This house could only be described as a house of horrors for these incredibly young children that had been brought to this house through this surrogacy process," LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said at an October press conference after the charges were filed.

According to the complaint, 32 cameras were installed in the mansion. Footage showed young children often spending hours sitting by desks. One room had no camera, but other cameras recorded nannies carrying the children into that room, and children could then be heard screaming from inside.

Prosecutors said baby Walter’s injuries were caused by one of the nannies, Chunmei Li, and charged her with child abuse under conditions likely to cause great bodily injury or death. Li is still at large and has not been arrested.

The couple’s lawyer, Mitchell Krems, said the allegation was a "mischaracterisation" based on the evidence he has reviewed, CBS News, BBC News’s US partner, reported.

Krems said his client Xuan was innocent.

"He is being targeted for exercising his constitutional right to have a large family," CBS News quoted the lawyer as saying.

The United States has become one of the world’s main destinations for surrogacy, in which a woman carries another person’s child to term. A 2024 study of US surrogacy data found that nearly one-third of intended parents between 2014 and 2020 came from abroad. China, where surrogacy is banned, was the largest source of international clients, making up about 42% of foreign intended parents.

The US offers assisted reproductive technologies that many people from China cannot easily access at home. Single women and LGBTQ people often face barriers to IVF and egg freezing. There are also couples who were constrained by China’s decades-long One-Child Policy and, by the time it ended in 2016, were physically unable to carry a baby themselves, leading some to seek surrogacy overseas.

Court documents show that the surrogates who carried babies for Xuan and Zhang did not initially find their request suspicious. Several were hired through an agency called "Mark Surrogacy". Although such agencies are usually seen as independent third parties, Mark Surrogacy was in fact run by the couple — something that was not always disclosed, according to two lawsuits filed by some of the surrogates.

Corporate records list Silvia Zhang as the manager of Mark Surrogacy, and the Arcadia mansion is listed as the company’s address in the same document. At the 16 October hearing, Deputy District Attorney MacKenzie Cameron Teymouri also told the judge that no other intended parent had ever been matched with a surrogate through the agency Xuan and Zhang ran from their home.

One surrogate, Tronderrica James, sued the couple in 2025 for damages including fraud and intentional misrepresentation. She said Zhang did not reveal her links to Mark Surrogacy during the early stages, and that she would not have gone ahead had she known the true arrangement. James did not respond to the BBC’s request for an interview.

The defendants later sought to have the case dismissed, arguing that the woman did not have enough grounds for a lawsuit. The case is still ongoing.

Five other women — Stacy Raelyn King, Evelyn Senolos Areja, Kayla Elliott, Hallie Hernandez and Vanity McGoveran — made similar claims in a separate lawsuit filed in August against Guojun Xuan and Silvia Zhang. The suit said Zhang failed to disclose her and Xuan’s links to the agency, as well as the actual number of children they had.

"Each Plaintiff was led to believe she was the only woman carrying for the couple, and that she was helping a family conceive a single, cherished child," their complaint alleged.

The couple also used another outside surrogacy agency, California-based Babytree Surrogacy. Patrick Yu, Babytree’s founder, told the BBC they were first approached by Xuan in 2018.

Yu said Xuan told him he wanted a large family. Babytree helped Xuan match with several women who gave birth to at least four babies.

"When we saw the news reports that he was under investigation, that was when I first realised he had so many children. We immediately stopped working with him," Yu said.

One of the women he helped match in 2024 was already pregnant when news of Walter’s injuries emerged in May last year. Authorities had placed their 21 children in protective custody while police investigated the alleged abuse.

Yu told the BBC he arranged a meeting between the couple and the then newly pregnant surrogate. He said the couple sounded very confident and reassured the surrogate mother that they treated the children well. She chose to continue and gave birth to a baby in early 2026.

According to Dr Liang Yu, Vice Chair of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s Chinese Special Interest Group and Program Director of Reproductive Clinical Science at Old Dominion University, there is no legal limit on how many surrogacies an intended parent can request, and no requirement to disclose that information.

Liang said some banks or agencies may have their own rules, but the law does not require it. A couple may also work with several agencies at once without fully revealing all their information to each one.

"This creates a grey area in the law and in industry regulations."

Liang added that she has seen many examples in that grey area involving wealthy clients, not only Chinese ones. But because of privacy protections and confidentiality agreements with doctors and fertility clinics, most are never made public.

"In other words, this kind of behaviour (like Xuan) is not unprecedented."

The BBC contacted the lawyers representing Xuan and Zhang about the allegations. Mitchell Krems, who represents both, did not respond. Matt Koohanim, who represents Zhang, said the matter would be handled through the proper legal channels.

At the 16 October hearing, Teymouri told the judge that their net worth in 2025 was well over $100m (£75m).

Teymouri also said that three passports for Xuan were found — Mexican, Chinese and one from the US.

According to local Chinese media, Xuan was born in Zhejiang in eastern China in 1959. At 18, he began working as an accountant at a state-owned grocery company in Urumqi. He became a deputy in the People’s Congress in Urumqi in 1997, and later a deputy for Xinjiang Autonomous Region in 2008 — a role in the provincial legislature similar to a state representative.

His public life continued after he moved to the US. He became president of the "US Xinjiang Chamber of Commerce" and vice president of the "China America Federation", appearing at public events as early as 2019.

In one photograph seen by the BBC, Xuan was holding hands with former Arcadia mayor Eileen Wang at an event in 2022. During Wang’s mayoral campaign that year, Xuan donated $4,900 through a company in his name. Wang resigned as Arcadia mayor in May this year after the US Department of Justice charged her with acting as an illegal agent of China. She pleaded guilty to the felony charge.

Less is known about Zhang, who worked as a real estate agent. Xuan and Zhang were never married. Court documents say Zhang was married to another man, whom she divorced in 2022.

At a hearing earlier this month, Teymouri told the judge that 26 children are involved with the family.

According to the complaint, Zhang kept a spreadsheet listing 21 children as of May 2025. They have been placed in state custody. Five more were born after that, CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, reported in January 2026.

One child born to a surrogate is still living with her surrogate mother in Virginia. Melissa Epps, a surrogate hired by the couple, was pregnant when she learned of the investigation last year and decided to keep the baby.

The couple sued Epps for breaching their surrogacy contract, seeking the return of the baby girl as well as $1 million from Epps. Epps initially had no lawyer and represented herself in court until Pamela DeCamp, an attorney with the Virginia Legal Aid Society, took her case.

Epps declined to be interviewed by the BBC. In a statement to the BBC, her lawyer DeCamp said they were "very thankful for the efforts of the Los Angeles, California District Attorney to obtain justice for the young children".

The case will continue until next March. The baby girl is under social services custody but is currently living with Epps. She recently celebrated her first birthday.

"She remains safe and happy in Virginia. And we are confident she will continue to do so," said DeCamp.