A couple with 21 children — 19 of whom were born through surrogates — ran a “house of horrors” at a sprawling Arcadia mansion, prosecutors said Tuesday, alleging that the pair employed a group of nannies who were encouraged to administer beatings and other punishments.
Prosecutors said that the incidents were captured on camera — and that the parents could be seen laughing at times as their children were forcefully disciplined.
Guojun Xuan, 66, and his wife, 39-year-old Silvia Zhang, were charged Tuesday with multiple counts of conspiracy to commit child abuse and witness intimidation, according to Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman. Xuan is also charged with one count of directly abusing a child. The couple are charged with helping one of the nannies avoid arrest after she allegedly hit a 2-month-old so hard he suffered a brain bleed, according to court records and a police affidavit.
The couple pleaded not guilty during a lengthy appearance in a Pasadena courtroom Tuesday afternoon where attorneys argued over their extreme wealth and the likelihood they would flee the U.S. before trial.
Xuan’s attorney, Mitchell Krems, said outside the courthouse that the children “love” Xuan and Zhang, who are being vilified due to anti-Chinese racism. Xuan was seated in a wheelchair with a bandage on the back of his neck and intravenous ports sticking out of his chest. Krems said Xuan recently had a bone marrow transplant and is suffering from a rare form of leukemia.
Hochman said the couple founded a surrogacy company in 2021 and duped several women into carrying their biological children to term, at times lying about being unable to conceive and begging for help to have their “miracle baby.”
Once inside Xuan’s sprawling, multimillion-dollar Arcadia mansion, the toddlers were subjected to round-the-clock surveillance by more than 32 cameras, hours-long “learning” sessions and continued abuse by a group of at least six nannies that Xuan and Zhang employed, according to Hochman and court records.
Xuan and Zhang sometimes instructed the nannies to strike the children harder, according to Hochman. The camera feeds showed the nannies carrying some of the young children into a space without cameras “where the children could then be heard screaming from inside,” Hochman said.
“This case is unprecedented. It is horrific. And the physical abuse, beating and punishment that these very young children received is despicable,” said Hochman, who promised a “reckoning” for the defendants.
Krems said the abuse was “all the nannies’ doing” and called any allegations that Xuan struck his children “patently false.”
The couple were arrested early Tuesday morning at the Camino Real Avenue property where the alleged abuse took place, authorities said. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Special Victims Bureau spearheaded the investigation. FBI agents were also on scene, but their role was unclear.
The arrests marked the end of an inquiry that started in May 2025 after Arcadia police officers conducting a child abuse investigation found 15 children living at the couple’s home, almost all between the ages of 1 and 3.
Hochman said Zhang and Xuan often misrepresented themselves to the surrogate mothers of their children.
In one instance, Hochman said, Zhang described herself as a single mother struggling to conceive when approaching a potential surrogate. The couple concealed their other children from another surrogate until she was seven months pregnant, Hochman said.
In total, the couple had 21 children together, according to Hochman, who said 14 of them were identified as abuse victims. All of the children were removed from the couple’s custody by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services last year, authorities said.
Krems would not comment on the status of any custody hearings involving the children but said the purported victims have yearned to be close to Xuan and Zhang during court-monitored visitations over the last year.
“Every time my clients have their visits these children are exhibiting physical proximity to the clients,” he said. “They want to be with Mr. Xuan and Ms. Zhang. They love the parents.”
Krems said his clients were motivated to have many children, in part, due to China’s prior restrictive one-child policy, which was aimed at limiting population growth there.
“They came to this country from a communist country to exercise the liberty to have as many children as they want,” he said. “If they were white, if they were Elon Musk, and they weren’t Chinese, they wouldn’t experience this level of scrutiny.”
China’s one-child policy was rescinded in 2015. Krems would not say when either Xuan or Zhang immigrated to the U.S.
Deputy Dist. Atty. MacKenzie Teymouri said in court that the defendants held American, Chinese and Mexican passports, and two law enforcement sources told The Times that Xuan and Zhang are Chinese nationals with dual citizenship. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing case.
A wealthy investor who runs a real estate company, Xuan had been on law enforcement’s radar since at least 2021 after an El Monte property he owned was found to be operating as an illicit casino, then a marijuana stash house and, later, a grow site for psychedelic mushrooms.
Teymouri cited Xuan’s extreme wealth when she asked Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kerry White to jail both defendants in lieu of $100 million on Tuesday afternoon. Teymouri said investigators uncovered millions of dollars in antique sculptures and rare alcohol brands inside the Arcadia home, as well as bank statements showing at least one account holding in excess of $70 million. The couple have access to more than 200 bank accounts through which more than $250 million has been transferred in the last three years, Teymouri said in court.
Krems argued the prosecution’s request for such a huge bail was “absurd,” noting not even murder defendants are held to such a high financial burden. White agreed, ordering that the couple be held in lieu of $20 million but only if they surrender all their passports, consent to home confinement and have no contact with their children.
Xuan and Zhang are due back in court Monday.
Police zeroed in on the Arcadia mansion after Zhang brought their 2-month-old son to Children’s Hospital in East Hollywood with a head injury. Doctors determined the baby was suffering from bleeding in his brain and retina and did not believe Zhang’s explanation that the boy fell from a bed, so they called police.
A nanny who worked for the family, Chunmei Li, was charged in July with assault likely to cause death in connection with the boy’s injuries. Teymouri said in court that Li fled the U.S. to Tijuana and then escaped to China.
Xuan and Zhang were each charged with one count of being an accessory after the fact to Li’s crimes and helping her evade arrest, according to a criminal complaint made public Tuesday. Krems said Xuan immediately fired Li upon learning of the abuse and denied his client was complicit in her alleged crimes.
Police described a “home school-type atmosphere” at the mansion, with many of the rooms used for classes. Six live-in nannies cared for the children, each of whom had an identical buzz cut, according to an Arcadia police search warrant. In Xuan and Zhang’s bedroom was a large monitor that provided a live feed from the cameras.
The identities of several of the other nannies caught on camera engaging in the abuse are not known to law enforcement, according to Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Nicole Nishida.
L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna said Tuesday that it took investigators a long time to present the case because many of the discussions the suspects had on video were either in Mandarin or a more obscure Chinese dialect, which was difficult to translate.
In a search warrant affidavit made public last year, detectives said the video recordings showed multiple instances of physical and emotional abuse, including a nanny striking a child, then forcing them to hold a squatting position. Hochman said Xuan was “chuckling” while he watched video of the child suffering in a “horse stance.”
Hochman described another situation where Xuan lifted one of the children up in the air by one arm and repeatedly struck the toddler “with sufficient force that the child’s body lurched in alternating directions with the blows.”
In the days leading up to the Arcadia police search of the home, Xuan and several of the nannies stripped clothes off some of the children and inspected their naked bodies for signs of abuse, according to the criminal complaint. They also instructed the nannies “the importance of disciplining the children in a manner that would not leave visible marks,” the complaint read. As Arcadia police approached the house in May 2025, Xuan allegedly ordered one nanny to put away the sticks used to hit the children, according to the complaint.
Xuan faces 17 years in prison if convicted as charged, Hochman said. Zhang faces 11 years.
Times staff writer Matthew Ormseth contributed to this report.