Prosecutors in Los Angeles County say a wealthy couple in Arcadia kept 32 motion-activated cameras running inside their mansion to watch nannies hit, slap, and spank babies, some as young as two months old. District Attorney Nathan Hochman called it a "house of horrors." The couple ran their own surrogacy company, and they have pleaded not guilty.
A Two-Month-Old, A Head Injury, And A Story About A Bed
The BBC reports that this all began in May 2025, when Silvia Zhang brought a two-month-old boy to the hospital with a head injury. She told medical staff the baby had fallen from a bed.
Hospital staff alerted law enforcement. When police showed up at the family's Arcadia home, they found something nobody expects to find in a suburban mansion: three separate rooms called "learning centres," each supervised by multiple nannies.
The couple's lawyer, Mitchell Krems, told CBS News in Los Angeles that the head injury allegation is a "mischaracterisation" based on the evidence he has reviewed.
Thirty-Two Cameras And A Spreadsheet
Here is where the details get hard to read. Hochman said the house had 32 motion-activated cameras, which the couple allegedly used to monitor the discipline the nannies handed out. Footage reportedly shows nannies spanking, slapping, or hitting the children.
So the allegation is not just that abuse happened under their roof. It is that the couple had a surveillance system watching it happen.
Then there is the spreadsheet. As of May 2025, Zhang reportedly maintained a document tracking 21 children, including those born to surrogates. Twenty-one kids in a spreadsheet. Read that one again.
The Nanny Who Is Now On The Run
One of the nannies, 58-year-old Chunmei Li, is accused of hitting the two-month-old baby who suffered the head injury two days before he reached the hospital. Krems said Li was quickly fired, per CBS News LA.
Li was previously charged with one felony count of child abuse under conditions likely to cause great bodily injury or death. Hochman said she is on the run, with a $105,000 warrant out for her arrest.
If convicted as charged, Li faces up to 12 years.
Surrogates Who Had No Idea
The couple ran their own surrogacy company, and prosecutors say they made false statements to at least two women who became surrogates, indicating that Zhang was struggling to conceive. Investigators believe the surrogate mothers came from around the country and did not know they were carrying embryos for the couple at the same time.
Think about what that means. These women agreed to carry a child for a family they believed needed help. Prosecutors say the family was allegedly collecting children, and the babies those women gave birth to ended up in that house.
Melissa Brisman, the attorney for two of the surrogates, told CBS News: "This is wonderful news that people will be held responsible for their actions and there will be consequences if you abuse the surrogacy system."
From Raid To Arrest To Arraignment
Authorities first raided the home in July 2025 and took 21 children into state custody. The Arcadia Police Department said at the time that the kids ranged from two months to 13 years old, though most were between one and three. Fifteen were taken from the house itself, while six others were living elsewhere and were later taken into custody.
It took until this week for the criminal case to land. Guojun Xuan, 66, and Zhang, 39, were arrested at the mansion on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty at a Pasadena courthouse, CBS News reported.
They are accused of conspiring to subject 15 of the 16 children living in their home to repeated physical abuse, after 21 children were removed from their custody last year. They also face a charge of dissuading a witness. Xuan faces up to 17 years and four months in state prison, while Zhang faces up to 11 years and eight months.
The Defense: A "Constitutional Right To Have A Large Family"
Krems says his client Xuan is innocent. "He is being targeted for exercising his constitutional right to have a large family," CBS News quoted the lawyer as saying.
Let's be clear about what is on the table. No one is charged with having a lot of kids. They are charged with abusing at least 14 of them, some barely old enough to hold up their own heads, and with dissuading a witness.
The couple is presumed innocent, and a court will sort out what the evidence shows. But "large family" is a bold framing for a case where the district attorney is using the word "unprecedented."
The Dingo Take
Thirty-two cameras. That is how many motion-activated cameras prosecutors say were watching the inside of this one house, a house with three "learning centres" and a spreadsheet tracking 21 children. Whatever the courts ultimately decide, those numbers should not sit comfortably with anyone.
The larger question is how a private surrogacy operation allegedly grew to this scale without anyone noticing until a two-month-old landed in an emergency room. Surrogates in different parts of the country were allegedly carrying babies for the same couple at the same time, and none of them knew. A system that lets that happen is a system with gaping holes in it. Brisman says there should be consequences for abusing the surrogacy system. Fine. Who is checking that system before the babies are born?
Hochman called the number of alleged victims "unprecedented," and he is probably right. Xuan and Zhang get their day in court, and they are entitled to a defense. But the children get something more important: they were pulled out of that house over a year ago. For once, the one piece of this story that worked is the part where a hospital worker picked up a phone.
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