Finally, in mid-April, according to sources, the court ruled that it would bypass the possibility for family reunification. What this means, in the short term, is that Silvia and Guojun’s twenty-plus kids will remain in foster care until they are placed into guardianships or adopted, probably by their foster families. Although the parents are challenging the rulings, it seems unlikely that Arcadia’s most infamous family will be brought back together.
The court’s decision has ramifications far beyond California, for reasons that are as confounding as they are unprecedented. Since Silvia and Guojun’s arrest, last May, they have had at least six more children, also through surrogates, bringing their tally to twenty-seven. These surrogates live in California, Georgia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and the newborns have been assigned to foster-care placements in their respective counties. Silvia and Guojun have pushed for these babies to be sent to L.A., but the courts and child-welfare agencies in other states have been cautiously watching the case before deciding the infants’ fates. This week, the eldest of these children will turn one.
Despite the stakes of commercial surrogacy—and its incursion into the most delicate realm of private life—it remains largely unregulated in the U.S. For years, the multibillion-dollar industry has been troubled by its share of baroque and tragic scandals. There are many ways for things to go wrong, given the number of parties involved, from surrogates and intended parents to fertility clinics, attorneys, and escrow agencies. What has set the Arcadia case apart is not just its staggering scale—and the ethical questions it raises about a new, assembly-line era of family-making—but the involvement of the child-welfare system in adjudicating parental rights. The termination of those rights is a profound decision, one the courts don’t take lightly.
To those closely following the case, however, the latest ruling in L.A. was hardly surprising. The evidence police and social workers collected was graphic, according to the files I reviewed; moreover, it had been captured by the parents’ own cameras. In one of the home’s surveillance tapes, a nanny admits to Silvia and Guojun that she’d hit Walter’s head with an open hand. In others, Silvia acknowledges that “something is wrong” with Walter, that her son isn’t eating, that his breathing is abnormal, and that his cry is “deep and low.” Despite these observations, Walter was not seen by a doctor until two days after his injuries occurred.
Also documented on tape were the goings on inside the home’s classrooms. The same day that the nanny allegedly beat Walter, other caregivers slapped and flogged his siblings, including with shoes and wooden sticks. According to notes taken by a social worker, one child, stuck in a high chair, tries to protect itself with its arms and hands as a nanny “relentlessly continues thumping the baby in the face (approximately 7–10 thumps).” In another tape, also viewed by social workers, Guojun enters a classroom shortly after a teacher has kicked and pummelled his four-year-old son to the ground. Guojun then commands the child to continue to hold a punitive squat position, instructing him to “listen to the teacher!”
One question that remains unanswered is whether law enforcement plans to act on this evidence. The police have been in possession of the same videos as the social workers, yet no charges have been brought against the parents in criminal court. Curiously, this is not for lack of trying. The Arcadia Police Department already submitted their case to the district attorney’s office last May, but the D.A. asked for further investigation. When I pressed the D.A.’s office on what that might entail, it declined to comment. The police told me that they had not conducted additional interviews with witnesses or caregivers, nor seized additional devices from the parents since the arrest.
