One of the defendants accused of allowing more than a dozen surrogate children to suffer severe abuse inside an Arcadia mansion previously fled the country to evade a separate child abuse investigation, a prosecutor disclosed in court.
Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney MacKenzie Teymouri told Superior Court Judge Caroline Lugo that 39-year-old Silvia Zhang fled to China after being charged with child abuse in 2019 for leaving her then-8-year-old daughter in a hot car for hours. Police responded to the 2019 incident after the young girl called 911 from inside the vehicle while Zhang was visiting co-defendant Guojun Xuan, 66. It remains unclear when Zhang returned to the United States to reunite with Xuan.
The Friday afternoon court hearing was triggered by defense attorneys attempting to secure their clients’ release on their own recognizance. Judge Lugo instead ordered both Xuan and Zhang held in lieu of $20 million bail. Prosecutors had filed a motion seeking a $100 million bail requirement, emphasizing the couple’s extreme wealth and flight risk.
Xuan and Zhang were charged last week with multiple counts of conspiracy to commit child abuse and witness intimidation. They have pleaded not guilty and denied the allegations through their legal counsel. Mitchell Krems, an attorney representing Xuan, declined to comment on the new allegations presented by prosecutors in court.
During the hearing, Teymouri detailed harrowing living conditions inside the Arcadia home, where more than 20 children were allegedly kept isolated for years without seeing sunlight. The children reportedly never attended traditional schools, visited playgrounds, or went to restaurants. Instead, they were confined to the residence, where prosecutors say they were forced to sit in makeshift classrooms from sunrise to sundown, studying math, Mandarin, and English around the clock.
“They didn’t go to school outside the home. They didn’t go to playgrounds. They didn’t go to restaurants,” Teymouri told the court. “They lived in this home and witnessed violence in the kitchen, in the bathrooms, in the bedrooms, in the foyer.”
Prosecutors allege that the couple directed a half-dozen employed nannies to constantly beat the children for minor misbehaviors. Security system surveillance footage recovered from inside the home last year reportedly captured thousands of instances of physical abuse over a 10-day period. Teymouri stated that reviewing the video evidence required muting the audio due to the near constant screaming of children in the background. In one instance, surveillance allegedly captured Xuan walking through a room of sleeping children and sweeping a flashlight like a warden, backhanding a child who woke up and ordering them back to sleep.
Authorities executing a search warrant at the mansion last week also discovered the cremated remains of another surrogate child that had been mailed to the residence. According to Teymouri, the infant died shortly after birth in Florida, and the package containing the remains was never opened by the defendants, demonstrating what prosecutors called utter indifference to the well-being of their children.
Following the intervention and custody takeover by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services last year, officials noted that the children were initially terrified to visit public parks because they had never been outside. Agency records show child welfare officials received referrals involving the household seven times between 2019 and 2025 before taking children from the home last year.
Defense attorneys offered contrasting arguments regarding their clients’ detention. Krems argued that Xuan’s health is rapidly deteriorating in custody as he recovers from leukemia treatments, lives with a hole in his chest, and now permanently requires a wheelchair. Krems previously asserted that his client has never been convicted of a crime, that any violence has not been adjudicated in court, and suggested the couple are targets of rising anti-Chinese sentiment.
Mark Koohanim, representing Zhang, argued that the alleged Arcadia abuse did not justify an exorbitant bail amount. Koohanim maintained that the children were well-nourished, received daily education, and lived inside a sprawling, expensive Arcadia mansion without severe implements of torture.
Judge Lugo ultimately sided with the prosecution’s assessment that the defendants’ substantial wealth and history of evading legal authorities warranted high bail to ensure their appearance in court. Court filings in the ongoing case also note that one of the employed nannies, Chunmei Li, was previously charged with child abuse after allegedly striking a child hard enough to cause a brain bleed, and subsequently fled to China with assistance from Xuan and Zhang.
