Twenty-one kids were taken from their parents by authorities in California.
The parents allegedly “farmed out their fertilized embryos to multiple surrogate mothers” and “hoarded the children inside a massive mansion” where they were abused, according to the New York Post.
Reportedly, Guojun Xuan, 65, and Silvia Zhang, 38, were found with 15 children in their California home. Previously, six of their other children were moved out of their home.
Xuan and Zhang own a surrogacy business and were reportedly “abusing” the program. Seventeen of their kids are toddlers or infants. The oldest child is 13 years old.
Xuan and Zhang have been charged with felony child endangerment and neglect.
This all began earlier this year when police found the slew of children when they were investigating complaints of a two-month-old with a traumatic brain injury. Cops believed that the baby was injured by the family’s nanny.
“The discipline, both verbal and physical, was severe to the point where it supported the beliefs that child abuse was occurring inside the home,” Arcadia police Lt. Kollin Cieadlo reportedly said.
Authorities believe that all of the children are the biological offspring of Xuan and Zhang, but that most of them were birthed by surrogates who were unaware of the situation (via NYP):
But the surrogates — hired from around the country — weren’t aware they were carrying the couple’s embryos and that there were multiple other surrogates, according to police.
[...]
One of those surrogate mothers said she had no idea Zhang and Xuan were keeping the kids for themselves.
“It’s horrific, it’s disturbing, it’s damaging emotionally,” Pennsylvania surrogate mother Kayla Elliot told KABC.
Elliot has launched a fundraiser page to cover legal costs as she fights to get the baby girl she carried for the couple placed in a permanent home after she discovered the child ended up in foster care.
“These agencies, we’re supposed to trust them and follow their guidance and come to find out this whole thing was a scam, and the parents own the agency – that was not disclosed at all beforehand,” she added.
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Kallie Fell, the executive director of the Center of Bioethics and Culture, told KABC that the situation “smells of trafficking, child trafficking.”
“What are the intentions of having that many children at home through these assisted reproductive technologies?” Fell added.
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