The Journey, Episode 4: The Courts

One of the surrogates secretly takes home the baby she carried. And, in an unprecedented circumstance, it seems like she might have the chance to keep her. New Yorker subscribers get early, ad-free access to “The Journey.” In Apple Podcasts, tap the link at the top of the feed to subscribe or link an existing subscription. Or visit newyorker.com/dark to subscribe and listen in the New Yorker app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Madeleine Baran?

  Previously on The Journey.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Yes, Detective. Hi, my name is Stacy King. I am currently pregnant in the state of Virginia.

• 0:13Madeleine Baran?

  Because we do not have a lot of legislation in place related to surrogacy, the guidance has not always been as clear as we've seen in other industries and fields. And so that does mean that we are feeling it out as we go.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  It's all legal in the state of California. I could start a surrogacy agency tomorrow if I wanted to.

• 0:38Speaker 03

  You tell yourself, like, this isn't your child. I mean, and those are things that you should know before even, like, applying to be a surrogate. Like, this is not your baby. Like, you don't get attached.

• 0:48Speaker 04

  Everybody kept telling us, "There's no baby yet, so we can't help you." And so I was like, "Oh, okay. Like, so what does that mean for us?"

• 0:58Speaker 05

  The baby cries for a few seconds until a thud or a hit is heard, and crying suddenly stops.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  There is an emotional switch at that point. And no, she's not mine. But you want to protect a child, an innocent being that you are carrying. So, yeah, the switch did definitely flip. Like, you know what? Let's start preparing to possibly bring her home.

• 1:37Madeleine Baran?

  In the fall of 2025, Sylvia and Guojun were being investigated for child endangerment, an allegation they've denied. Their many children were in foster care in Los Angeles, while a dependency court there was weighing whether or not the couple would be able to get them back. Meanwhile, there were several women still pregnant for the couple, and they were worried about what would happen to the babies they were about to deliver. One of these pregnant surrogates was Stacy King, the bookkeeper Natalie and I visited in Virginia, the one with the "It's Not Mine" T-shirt.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  I just wanted her, I wanted to be safe. I wanted her to be safe. My next thought was just trying to make sure she came out healthy.

• 2:25Madeleine Baran?

  Stacy didn't know whether the baby girl she was carrying would end up with the intended parents or be taken into foster care. Both scenarios seemed troubling. And after seeing images of what looked like child abuse inside the Arcadia Mansion, Stacy started to consider whether there was anything she could do before it was too late.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Like, every bone in our bodies was to protect this child. And if we could keep her, we would.

• 2:55Madeleine Baran?

  Stacy still didn't have any more clarity on her rights, if any, to the child. She'd signed a contract agreeing that the baby belonged to the intended parents. But in surrogacies, you usually need to sign another piece of paperwork, too. This document, known as an order of parentage, definitively establishes who the legal parents are. In the state of Virginia, it's signed right after the birth. If she didn't end up signing it, Stacy could be considered the child's legal mother. Stacy wasn't sure what would happen at the hospital, but she started to get ready, just in case.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  We had a diaper bag. I had onesies. I had already gotten a breast pump. I had busted out one of the smaller car seats for an infant and put, he had, put that in the car. Like, we were prepared.

• 3:48Madeleine Baran?

  A week before Stacy was due, she went in for a checkup, and the doctor told her she needed to go straight to the hospital. In the early morning hours, on September 25, 2025, Stacy delivered a baby girl.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  I think 1:06 was her time on her birth certificate. And she came out happy and healthy. I held her from birth, basically, for two to three hours, doing skin-to-skin.

• 4:25Madeleine Baran?

  Stacy fell asleep with the baby next to her. Before long, two staff members from the hospital stopped by her room.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  They asked about the, um, the parents and the investigation and the contract and CPS. And they basically said, "Okay, time's up." And informed me at that time that they were taking her.

• 4:55Madeleine Baran?

  The staff gave Stacy 10 minutes to say goodbye. Then the baby was placed in a bassinet and wheeled away.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  And that was the last I saw of her. Um, sorry.

• 5:12Madeleine Baran?

  The baby ended up staying in the hospital for weeks, in a kind of custodial purgatory.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  She spent, literally, until, I want to say, the first week of November in the hospital.

• 5:25Madeleine Baran?

  She was in the hospital for over a month?

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:28Madeleine Baran?

  Was it, was she in the NICU?

• 5:30Speaker 01

  No. She was perfectly fine. Like, there were no health reasons to keep her there.

• 5:38Madeleine Baran?

  Stacy would drive by the hospital, and she knew it was pointless, but she waved.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  It hurt. It hurt a lot that I couldn't, on top of the postpartum and everything else. Like, I didn't have this baby to take home when I thought I had actually be able to take the baby home.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  And going home to still pumping and, um,

• 6:09Speaker 01

  my kids asking, "Where's the baby? How's the baby? We want to see the baby." Um, and not having the baby. It was hard.

• 6:39Madeleine Baran?

  Ever since she'd heard the news about the intended parents, Stacy had been trying to find a lawyer. And she'd heard back from someone who seemed promising, a well-regarded attorney in Richmond, Virginia, named Colleen Quinn. Stacy and Colleen exchanged a dozen or so emails over the course of a few weeks. Stacy explained her situation, sent her a copy of the contract, and asked for advice.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  I was ecstatic, honestly, because I thought I had found someone who was actually willing and going to help us.

• 7:10Madeleine Baran?

  When I visited Stacy with our producer Natalie, she read us some of the emails Colleen had sent to her.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  We are helping you right now at no cost, but if you're working with someone else, we just need to work together with them. If you want to work with someone else, that is fine, but then we would let, and we would let you. But we understand, just confusing. We cannot have you represented by multiple lawyers, which makes sense. So I stopped trying to call other attorneys.

• 7:36Madeleine Baran?

  But then Stacy received a series of surprising updates from Colleen. Colleen told her that Sylvia had gotten in touch. She and Guojun were also looking for a lawyer in Virginia. And Colleen was now suggesting that Stacy work with another lawyer in the area. Colleen told Stacy she was actually considering representing the intended parents herself.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  I have looked into this further, and while it's weird to want to have so many children, although I had Catholic families in my neighborhood, growing up with 11, 15, and even 18, I don't see anything illegal here. And I think the media has represented a somewhat distorted view, and the IPs deserve a chance of their side to be shared.

• 8:25Madeleine Baran?

  What were your thoughts when you got that?

• 8:27Speaker 01

  I felt completely betrayed.

• 8:32Madeleine Baran?

  That was a few weeks before Stacy's due date. She scrambled to find another lawyer. And days before she went into labor, she indicated to the intended parents, with the help of a new lawyer, that she no longer planned to honor the contract. Then, a few weeks after Stacy gave birth, while the baby girl was still in limbo in the hospital, Sylvia and Guojun sued Stacy with the help of Colleen Quinn. The parents were alleging Stacy had breached her contract because she hadn't notified Sylvia and Guojun when she was going into labor. She had interfered with their right to pick up the child from the hospital after the birth, and she hadn't signed that other document, the order of parentage.

• 9:15Madeleine Baran?

  Now, the intended parents were demanding Stacy pay their legal fees, and a million dollars in damages. Stacy didn't have that kind of money. She didn't even have the baby. So she settled the lawsuit. After being stuck in the hospital for around a month, the baby was eventually moved across the country to a foster family in LA, closer to her siblings' unintended parents.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  It's frustrating. It hurts. It makes me mad. Like, there are so many emotions that I go through,

• 9:52Speaker 01

  not even on a, on a weekly basis, but sometimes on a daily basis, that just, it's rough.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  We just need to let it go. There is nothing we can do. And it's extremely hard to accept.

• 10:10Madeleine Baran?

  What made the situation even harder to accept was that there was another surrogate,

• 10:18Madeleine Baran?

  also living in Virginia,

• 10:21Madeleine Baran?

  whose story was turning out differently.

• 10:27Madeleine Baran?

  Quietly, secretly, that surrogate had taken the baby girl home.

• 10:34Madeleine Baran?

  And in an unprecedented circumstance, it seemed like she might have the chance to keep her.

• 10:45Madeleine Baran?

  From In the Dark and The New Yorker, this is The Journey.

• 10:51Madeleine Baran?

  I'm Eva Kaufman, and this is episode four, The Courts.

• 11:11Madeleine Baran?

  Stacy King was one of four pregnant surrogates who gave birth that summer and fall. The other surrogates had also been prepared to take the babies home. The women were scattered across the country, and each ended up in a different situation. Along with Stacy's baby, there was a baby boy in Pennsylvania. He had gone into foster care there right away. There was another baby boy in Georgia. The surrogate who'd given birth to him had taken him home with the blessing of her county's Child Services Department. But two months later, a social worker showed up at her house without warning and took the baby away. Of the four babies, only one was still living with her surrogate mother. That

• 11:55Madeleine Baran?

  was the baby who was quietly taken home elsewhere in Virginia by a surrogate named Melissa Epps.

• 12:03Madeleine Baran?

  When Melissa got pregnant, she was 40 years old. She lived in a rural county just a few hours away from Stacy. In another coincidence, she'd given birth just the day before Stacy, on September 24, 2025. I'd actually talked to Melissa on the phone back when she was pregnant, though I hadn't recorded the call. She told me then she'd done some work in the industry for a different surrogacy agency, recruiting women to sign up as surrogates. She said this was her third journey, but her first with Mark's surrogacy. I'd asked about her plans for the upcoming birth, but she'd been vague. I'd had no idea at the time that she'd been making preparations in secret.

• 12:49Madeleine Baran?

  When she went into labor, she went to a different hospital than the one she told the agency about, picked out a name for the baby girl, and took her home. After Sylvia and Guojun found out, they sued her, with the help of Colleen Quinn, the attorney who'd also sued Stacy. The complaint alleged that Melissa had breached her contract by interfering with their rights to parent their 24th child. It cited damages of $1 million. Like Stacy, Melissa didn't have $1 million. But unlike Stacy, she did have the baby. And she was determined to keep her.

• 13:32Madeleine Baran?

  This kind of situation, where a surrogate challenges her contract, is incredibly rare. In fact, the most famous instance in which a surrogate fought for custody of the child she carried almost put an end to the entire surrogacy industry. The case was known as Baby M, and it started in 1985, when a woman named Mary Beth Whitehead agreed to carry a child for a married couple in New Jersey in exchange for $10,000. The baby was conceived using Mary Beth's own egg, so she was genetically related to the child. During her pregnancy, Mary Beth began to have doubts. And after she gave birth, she reluctantly surrendered

• 14:17Madeleine Baran?

  the baby to the couple, Elizabeth and William Stern. She later spoke about it on a morning news program. I did try to let her go, and I had lived one night without her, and it was the most miserable night of my life. I never want to experience it again.

• 14:35Madeleine Baran?

  The next day, Mary Beth asked the couple if she could have the baby back, just for a week, to relieve the pain of separation. And the couple agreed. But it soon became clear Mary Beth planned to keep her for longer. The Sterns and police paid a visit to Mary Beth's home to retrieve the baby, but Mary Beth handed the baby out the window to her husband, who fled. Mary Beth and her family spent 87 days on the lam with the baby. Finally, a private detective tracked them down in Florida, and the infant was brought back to the Stern household in New Jersey. And from that point on, I had no attorney. I tried desperately to try to find one,

• 15:18Madeleine Baran?

  and I couldn't. And, you know, they had the upper hand. They had money, they had power. And, you know, I was trying to catch up, but I couldn't.

• 15:28Madeleine Baran?

  Eventually, Mary Beth found an attorney to represent her in the custody battle, which was breathlessly covered by reporters around the world. It's a case that might test the wisdom of a Solomon. An odd situation in New Jersey where a surrogate mother is fighting in court to get back the baby girl she delivered last March. Mary Beth Whitehead went to court hoping to win temporary custody of the six-month-old baby, who has been named Baby M by the court.

• 15:55Madeleine Baran?

  At first, it seemed like the Sterns, the intended parents, had prevailed. A judge in New Jersey ruled against Mary Beth. He said the surrogacy contract was valid. But after an appeal, the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed the decision, declaring that paid surrogacy was not legal, and even, quote, "perhaps criminal and potentially degrading to women." The ruling argued that "there are, in a civilized society, some things that money cannot buy."

• 16:28Madeleine Baran?

  Even though the contract had been invalidated, there was still the matter of the baby girl. Good evening. Baby M goes to her father. The judge awarded custody to William Stern, the biological father. Mary Beth, the biological mother, was given visitation rights.

• 16:54Madeleine Baran?

  The Baby M case put novel, controversial questions on trial about the commodification of children and the definition of family, but it didn't exactly resolve any of them.

• 17:07Madeleine Baran?

  Ever since Baby M, the United States has been a kind of laboratory of surrogacy, with each state drawing its own lesson from the case. In New Jersey, surrogacy remained illegal until 2018. Other state legislatures took note, also banning surrogacy or declaring contracts unenforceable. California, meanwhile, became one of the most surrogacy-friendly states in the nation. Deborah Spar, a professor at Harvard Business School, has observed that such patchwork laws make surrogacy a riskier endeavor than it need be, both for intended parents, who don't know if their contracts are enforceable, and for surrogates,

• 17:51Madeleine Baran?

  who don't have the protections that might prevail in other kinds of commercial exchanges.

• 17:58Madeleine Baran?

  Which brings us back to Melissa Epps and the baby she gave birth to in Virginia.

• 18:05Madeleine Baran?

  To be sure, Melissa had very different justifications than Mary Beth Whitehead for wanting to take the baby girl she'd carried home. But by fighting to keep her, she was, once again, raising existential questions for the entire industry. Because if surrogates like Melissa are allowed to change their minds and keep the kids they carry, then the surrogacy industry might not be much of an industry at all.

• 18:56Madeleine Baran?

  In February, Natalie and I flew to Richmond, Virginia, and drove an hour west to the town of Farmville. It's home to fewer than 10,000 people, an excellent Indian restaurant, and a small college. It was late winter, and the trees were bare.

• 19:15Madeleine Baran?

  Got some brick buildings here downtown courthouse. Wait, where's the courthouse? It's like over there. The Prince Edward County Courthouse sits in the center of town. This is where the breach of contract lawsuit against Melissa Epps had been filed by Sylvia and Guojun. That lawsuit, which had begun as a contract dispute, had since become a sort of proxy custody battle between a single mother in a rural county and a couple from Los Angeles, who seemed to have unlimited resources to spend on the fight. Melissa declined to be interviewed for this podcast, citing the ongoing litigation, but I've pieced together her story from court documents, correspondence, and interviews with lawyers on the case.

• 19:59Madeleine Baran?

  I'll tell you how we got involved. And I'm going off memory, so, but initially... One of those lawyers was Kemper Beasley III. He represents the Prince Edward County Department of Social Services. He's also the prosecutor in a neighboring county, a civil lawyer in another, and breeds beef cattle. When Natalie and I met up with Kemper near the courthouse, he wore a baseball cap branded with the logo of his family farm. Obviously, I've got to have another job to make a living. So my wife's a good sport. I come home and I feed cows. Now I live on the family farm.

• 20:35Speaker 04

  You know, I lived in a house my dad was raised in, yeah. So they didn't stray too far.

• 20:41Madeleine Baran?

  Kemper gamely walked us through the case, though he warned us he'd never seen anything like it.

• 20:47Speaker 04

  Obviously, this is uncharted territory for us in central Virginia. Obviously, we deal with adoption, things of that nature, but not surrogacy.

• 20:57Madeleine Baran?

  The first thing that happened in the case was that Sylvia and Guojun asked the judge to reunite them with their daughter as soon as possible. They requested an emergency hearing, which took place a few months before our visit.

• 21:11Madeleine Baran?

  Melissa hadn't been able to find a lawyer. She was representing herself, and she hadn't filed any motions. So the judge only had one side of the story. As far as he could tell, Melissa had had a change of heart and was now preventing the intended parents from bonding with their newborn.

• 21:28Speaker 04

  A local judge, it's my understanding, and he's articulate, this did not know any of the background. All he had in front of him was, of course, the contract case, you know, the surrogacy contract. That's all he knew, and that's what he initially ruled then as a result of what he had before him.

• 21:46Madeleine Baran?

  The judge ruled that Melissa should turn over the baby girl to the intended parents as soon as possible, and he ordered Melissa to sign the parentage documents by the following evening. Sylvia booked a flight to Virginia, and that might have been the end of it. Except that Kemper Beasley III, as the lawyer for the Department of Social Services, or DSS, knew something about the case that the judge didn't.

• 22:15Madeleine Baran?

  A critical fact that hadn't been mentioned in any of the court filings, which was that Sylvia and Guojun's other children were all in foster care in California and that the couple was under investigation for alleged abuse and neglect.

• 22:32Madeleine Baran?

  So that same day, when Kemper heard about the judge's ruling, he rushed to prepare an emergency order to stop Sylvia from picking up the baby. Kemper told us the county didn't want to turn the baby over to the intended parents while the case in California was still being decided.

• 22:51Speaker 04

  So this was one where we just, we felt like it was necessary for the protection of child to make sure this child was in a safe place until more information could be discovered or determined.

• 23:02Madeleine Baran?

  Sylvia landed in Virginia expecting to pick up the baby.

• 23:07Madeleine Baran?

  But she was too late. Melissa Epps had already handed the baby girl over to DSS, which had taken custody of the child.

• 23:16Speaker 04

  It was a very cordial situation. I mean, obviously, there was an attachment there, but Ms. Epps has been very cooperative in working with the department. She understood, I think, what the department was doing.

• 23:27Madeleine Baran?

  The two-month-old was put in a foster placement. Both Melissa and the intended parents got the right to visit her. Melissa visited in person, while Sylvia, except on one or two occasions, visited over Zoom. The infant would be taken into a room at the DSS offices, and Sylvia would watch through the screen as she was fed and played with by a caregiver. Kemper told us, after about a month of this, the social workers could see how strong the bond was between Melissa and the child. And so the department decided the baby would go back to Melissa.

• 24:04Speaker 04

  She was well-suited to be able to take care of the child. She was in certainly the best position of anyone locally to do so. Ms. Epps had a good support system, including the department.

• 24:17Madeleine Baran?

  To be clear, this didn't mean that Melissa was granted custody. That was still to be decided in a different court, the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court of Prince Edward County, where the intended parents and Melissa had both filed custody petitions. But in the meantime, Melissa was appointed the baby's caregiver.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  It doesn't seem in the best interest of the child to be removed from the only thing the child knows, the only person the child really knows of at this point.

• 24:46Madeleine Baran?

  Kemper kept telling us, it's difficult to overstate how abnormal this whole situation was. How often, how often does DSS intervene like that?

• 24:56Speaker 04

  Oh, no, I mean, I've never done it. I mean, this thing of how unusual this is, this essentially, this is a contract action, completely civil, just like, did I pay you for your apples? I mean, this is the only scenario I can think of, quite frankly, where we were asked to intervene in a contract action.

• 25:24Madeleine Baran?

  The lawsuit that was filed against Melissa was, on its face, a contract dispute.

• 25:31Madeleine Baran?

  But it wasn't about some apples. It was about a baby girl.

• 25:51Madeleine Baran?

  Okay, so we're outside of the Prince Edward County District Court. Natalie and I had timed our visit to Farmville to coincide with a hearing in the parents' case against Melissa.

• 26:03Madeleine Baran?

  You want to say a little bit about what is going to happen today? Yes, I will try to simplify it. It's, it is very, it's a lot. So we're here to watch as... It was kind of a meta-hearing. At issue was not the substance of the case, but whether it would be allowed to proceed at all. By this point, Melissa had gotten a lawyer. She'd called the Virginia Legal Aid Society, and an attorney there named Pamela DeCamp had agreed to represent her. Pam's specialty is domestic violence, not contract law. So this was all, for her, like Kemper, totally new. And Pam's job was made more difficult by the fact that Melissa had missed the deadline to respond to the complaint.

• 26:48Madeleine Baran?

  So Melissa was in danger of a judgment in favor of the parents, meaning she could be on the hook for a huge sum of money.

• 26:57Madeleine Baran?

  At today's hearing, the judge was going to decide whether Pam could file a late response on Melissa's behalf.

• 27:05Madeleine Baran?

  This might have seemed at first glance like an administrative formality, but the stakes were high. As Pam had observed in one of her filings, the whole case was, at its core, quote, "a lawsuit for possession of a three-month-old human being." I just went inside to ask about cell phones, and they said to leave them in the car as well. No recording, no electronic devices of any kind? Of any kind, for anyone. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's good to know. Yep.

• 27:34Madeleine Baran?

  So we'll just have notebooks then?

• 27:37Madeleine Baran?

  We headed to the courtroom on the third floor and took our seats in the front row. Up on the dais, in a high-backed leather chair, was Judge Donald Blessing. A blue dress shirt peeked out beneath his black robe, and his white hair was neatly parted in a comb over. As Judge Blessing called the hearing to order, he asked if there were any members of the media present. Natalie and I sighed and raised our hands. We were the only people in the audience, and we figured, this is it. We're going to be asked to leave. We're not going to see it. But actually, it turned out Judge Blessing just wanted everyone to introduce themselves. "How are you going to write an article if you don't know who everyone is?" he asked.

• 28:22Madeleine Baran?

  Usually, in a contract case, you just have two parties. But here, there were four. So many, they had to sit in unusual places. Kemper Beasley, the lawyer for the Department of Social Services, was perched at the witness stand. Another attorney had taken up residence in the jury box. She introduced herself as the guardian at Lightem, and she'd been appointed to represent the child's interests. Melissa sat at the defense table. She has long, wavy brown hair and a Roman nose. Beside her was her lawyer, Pam DeCamp. Sylvia and Guojun weren't there, but they'd hired two lawyers to represent them, a local

• 29:03Madeleine Baran?

  attorney seated at the plaintiff's table, and Colleen Quinn, the lawyer who'd sued both Stacy and Melissa. And now, here she was. Well, sort of. She was appearing virtually, over Zoom, her head floating on a big monitor mounted to the wall. She couldn't see us because the camera was pointed at the judge, but we could see her, surrounded by books, in her office in Richmond.

• 29:32Madeleine Baran?

  The first part of the hearing was pretty straightforward. Judge Blessing looked at Pam DeCamp's request to submit Melissa's defense, despite Melissa having missed the deadline, and he basically said, "Okay, fine. This is too important a case for me not to hear everyone's side of the story."

• 29:50Madeleine Baran?

  The next part is where things got interesting. Colleen Quinn wanted the case moved to California. It wasn't entirely clear to the judge why she was arguing to change the location of a case she herself had filed in Prince Edward County.

• 30:06Madeleine Baran?

  He asked Colleen a series of pointed questions, almost like he was cross-examining her. He started asking about the surrogacy contract. Was the contract valid? And if it wasn't, wouldn't it be true that, under Virginia law, the birth mother would be considered the legal mother? In other words, wasn't Melissa Epps the mom?

• 30:29Madeleine Baran?

  Colleen pushed back. The contract was valid. Ms. Epps had signed it. It stated that Sylvia and Guojun are the parents, and the parents lived in California.

• 30:41Madeleine Baran?

  Then Judge Blessing asked, "Well, what's more important? What the contract says, or the best interest of the child?"

• 30:50Madeleine Baran?

  This turned out to be a tougher question than it initially appeared. Colleen started to say, "That's one of the interests. We have to weigh all these factors." Judge Blessing interrupted. "Bob Shepherd must have taught me wrong," he said, "'cause I was taught the best interest of the child is paramount." Bob Shepherd, it turned out, was one of his professors at law school. Colleen said, "Of course, it's a factor." And Judge Blessing took this as his opening. "Oh, so it is a key factor." And then he looked around the court, as if daring anyone to disagree with him.

• 31:30Madeleine Baran?

  And now Judge Blessing came in for the landing. He said, "We are dealing with a living, breathing creature, not a contract for the manufacture of widgets or whatnots."

• 31:50Madeleine Baran?

  Whether or not he'd intended to, Judge Blessing was articulating the fundamental tension of commercial surrogacy.

• 31:59Madeleine Baran?

  Family law is often governed by a best interest of the child analysis, which is basically what it sounds like. Judges, children's attorneys, social workers, are all supposed to be guided by what would most benefit the child's safety, routines, and emotional well-being. Of course, like any ideal, best interest is subjective. But at least in theory, the child is a central object of concern. When it comes to surrogacy law, however, the best interest of a child is typically not in play. Colleen was correct that this question of who gets to be the parent is supposed to be determined by the contract and other legal documents.

• 32:43Madeleine Baran?

  As their debate played out in the courtroom in the small town of Farmville, the questions left unresolved by baby M were rearing their head all over again. Should a contract be able to govern a child? What about the person who carries that child? Where do her rights end or begin? And Melissa's situation was raising a new set of complicated questions. If the intended parents aren't seen as fit to parent, what is in the child's best interest? And who should get to decide?

• 33:25Madeleine Baran?

  Melissa's lawyer, Pam DeCamp, didn't think moving the case to California made much sense. This child was born in Virginia, she said. She's never stepped foot out of the state. And, she added, this little girl is thriving. Besides, Pam pointed out, the case that would determine the fate of the couple's children in California was still unfolding. In that case, LA County's Child Welfare Agency was alleging, among other things, that Sylvia and Guojun had failed to protect their children from abuse and neglect and enabled an environment of cruelty. The latest there was that a judge in the dependency court had recently taken an important step toward a decision.

• 34:09Madeleine Baran?

  She'd sustain these allegations, finding them to be true by what's known as a preponderance of evidence. But she'd yet to make a final ruling on whether or not the couple's 20-plus children would be returned to their care. Judge Blessing agreed that it was best to wait for that decision in California. So he determined that for now, this case and the child would remain in Virginia.

• 34:43Madeleine Baran?

  Outside the courtroom, Melissa and her lawyer Pam DeCamp greeted us warmly. Pam recommended we shop at a local furniture store if we had time to spare. But she declined our request for an interview, explaining that neither she nor Melissa were comfortable speaking until the case was over.

• 35:08Madeleine Baran?

  I also wanted to talk to the parent's lawyer, Colleen Quinn, but she'd already logged off the Zoom. We set up a video call a few months later. The connection was bad, so it's a little hard to hear. But I want to briefly tell you what she said. Thank you so much for making the time. I was the reporter who was sitting in the audience, but we couldn't see each other because you were on Zoom during a hearing in Virginia a few months back. I first wanted to ask Colleen about her correspondence with Stacy King, the other surrogate in Virginia. Stacy had told me she was ecstatic when it seemed as though she'd found a lawyer willing to help her. And then she felt betrayed when Colleen had agreed to represent the intended parents.

• 35:53Madeleine Baran?

  I wanted to understand how Colleen saw the situation.

• 35:56Speaker 04

  I was not retained. We did not have a retainer agreement or anything like that. She would be what you might call a prospective client. Like, at some point, she might be a client. But at that point, we were just trying to get information.

• 36:12Madeleine Baran?

  I asked about conflicts of interest. Was it okay that Colleen had communicated with Stacy and then sued her on behalf of the intended parents? Colleen steered me to the Virginia State Bar Rules of Professional Conduct, which explain a conflict of interest would arise only if that prospective client had shared information that might significantly harm them in the legal matter at hand.

• 36:37Speaker 04

  So the critical piece was, did I, in my conversations with Stacy, learn something that would be significantly harmful to her? And there was nothing in any of our communications that would be significantly harmful to her. She didn't share, like, anything that was gonna hurt her. So when I looked at the rules of ethics, it was like, it's fine. It's fine for me to go ahead and represent.

• 37:07Madeleine Baran?

  I consulted a professor of legal ethics at the University of Virginia, who echoed Colleen's reading of the statute, though he noted that lawyers may exercise discretion if they fear the appearance of a conflict. In any case, Colleen said that after the intended parents contacted her about the possibility of representation, she did some research into their situation, talked to their attorney in California, and felt reassured.

• 37:33Speaker 04

  I needed to do more digging in terms of what had happened. And so I did my own due diligence in terms of, in that regard.

• 37:45Madeleine Baran?

  Asked about what had happened since in the dependency court in California. I guess I was wondering, given that the allegations in the California court were sustained,

• 37:59Madeleine Baran?

  most of the allegations about cruelty, neglect, physical abuse, and it was based on video evidence, if you had any concerns about the children being returned to the parents? Or if you felt pretty certain that, you know, child abuse had not occurred despite the court's ruling there?

• 38:20Speaker 04

  I can't comment on that. I'm sorry.

• 38:23Madeleine Baran?

  Colleen stressed repeatedly that she couldn't comment on any pending litigation in California or Virginia. But you were saying you still feel quite reassured despite what the court in California has found with the 20 other kids?

• 38:38Speaker 04

  The proceedings out there are going to continue. And I feel that these are good parents, despite what's going on.

• 38:50Madeleine Baran?

  She said, "I feel that these are good parents, despite what's going on." I wanted to know what she made of the images from the parents' own surveillance system, showing nannies spanking the children and forcing them to squat. I was just wondering if there was anything that would come up in the case file that would change your mind about the certainty that they should get this child back in Virginia?

• 39:16Speaker 04

  Everything is evolving. I haven't had the same access to what you have had access to. What you know now is not anything that I knew last year, okay? So you're trying to impute the information you have to me over a year ago?

• 39:40Madeleine Baran?

  No, no, not at all, because the information about what had been going on inside of the classrooms and the videos, some of that had come out by late July. I mean, there were just kind of-- The images from the videos I was asking her about had been on the news. And even if she hadn't seen the news, Melissa's lawyer had appended several articles to her court filings earlier this year, which Colleen was obligated to read. Colleen had told me that she'd done her due diligence. But when I'd asked her about this alarming information about her clients, she reiterated that it wasn't her job to seek it out.

• 40:18Speaker 04

  So I don't necessarily have a duty to do an investigation on my own clients, okay?

• 40:26Madeleine Baran?

  Colleen emphasized that she wasn't involved in the case in California.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  I can't be adjudicated for facts because I don't-- I haven't sat in that courtroom. I haven't listened to testimony.

• 40:37Madeleine Baran?

  And anyway, she said, what the parents had or hadn't done was beside the point.

• 40:42Speaker 04

  So regardless of what somebody does, they're entitled to representation. I mean, if every person that was accused of something wasn't allowed to have a criminal defense attorney, we wouldn't have the system that we have. So people are entitled to representation to protect, you know, whatever their interests are.

• 41:08Madeleine Baran?

  But Colleen wasn't acting as Sylvia and Guojun's criminal defense attorney. Colleen is, among other things, a family formation lawyer and a former president of the Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys. She had chosen to help these parents, protect their interests, and get custody of their newborn daughter. I guess I'm just wondering if there's any, like, ethical concerns about the children going back to that house? Or any safety concerns?

• 41:39Speaker 04

  Children are-- Right now, so children aren't going back to that house. As long as DSS is involved, the children are going into foster care. And then the issue is, you know, is there termination of parental rights? Or if they're not terminated, parental rights? And I'm not involved in that part.

• 41:58Madeleine Baran?

  Colleen was saying that Sylvia and Guojun were good parents. But she was also saying that the parents' rights might be terminated anyways. And if the case was transferred to California and the baby girl that Melissa was taking care of was moved there, the baby wouldn't be going to the house in Arcadia, but rather straight into foster care, hopefully near her siblings in Los Angeles. And that, Colleen said, would be in the child's best interest.

• 42:32Madeleine Baran?

  A few hours later, I got an email from Colleen. She told me she no longer wished to say, "These are good parents." When I asked if there was something else she wanted to say about her clients instead, she replied, "Based on the information I obtained last year, I thought they were good parents." In another follow-up email, she emphasized, quote, "Ethical obligations are judged at the time of initial representation, based on what is known then, not on information that comes out later or outcomes reached later."

• 43:20Madeleine Baran?

  That day after the hearing in Farmville, there was one more person we were hoping to talk to, someone whose entire career was dedicated to representing the best interest of children. That was Brooke Teefy, the child's guardian at Lightem in Virginia. Do you think she's still in there? I kind of think so. Okay. Because we were in the hallway, and I think we would have seen her coming down the stairs. Natalie and I were sitting in our car in the parking lot by the courthouse, hoping to catch her. We'd met Brooke briefly during a 10-minute break at the hearing. Lawyers on confidential child welfare cases usually don't talk to reporters, but Brooke Teefy had actually strolled up to our seats and handed us her card, and then, unprompted, told us what she thought of the case.

• 44:04Madeleine Baran?

  The first thing she said, correct me if I'm wrong, when she walked over to us, was, "I have no empathy for the surrogate." I wrote down, "I have little sympathy for the surrogate, who's already received $70,000." It had been kind of awkward, since Melissa was in earshot, sitting at the defense table. Now, in our car, Natalie and I were rummaging through our notes on what else Brooke had said. She was definitely not on the side of Melissa, but she wasn't really on the parent's side either. No. She was like, "This is a whole, this is a horrible situation, and the child kind of loses either way." Yeah. Um, I'm just looking at my notes. Finally, we spotted Brooke Teefy heading to her car.

• 44:49Madeleine Baran?

  She was wearing sparkly pink earrings, and her blonde hair was loosely clipped back. She told us she didn't have time to sit down.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Listen, I'm having a date night with my husband, who happens to be a, he's a circuit court judge, just like Judge Blessing, but in another circuit.

• 45:05Madeleine Baran?

  But she was happy to keep chatting for a few minutes in the parking lot. Brooke told us she'd been representing children for the past 32 years.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  I mean, it's rewarding. I mean, there's some horrible cases, but there are a lot of really good ones, too. But this is one of the sad cases, because I think that, in the end, all of these children are the ones who suffer, you know?

• 45:29Madeleine Baran?

  I was wondering how her client, the baby, was doing now that she was back with Melissa. How many weeks has the, has she been with Ms. Epps now?

• 45:38Speaker 01

  She has been with her for now two months. So, anyway, and the child is, I think, I believe about three or four months old now.

• 45:52Madeleine Baran?

  How is she doing right now?

• 45:54Speaker 01

  She's doing well. She's growing, and all her needs are being cared for. But there's a sadness, too, because this child, who wasn't asked to be brought up in this world, is now living in Farmville, Virginia. How does that happen?

• 46:10Madeleine Baran?

  Very far away from the siblings.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Yes, far away from the siblings. And I don't know if you've looked around, this is Prince Edward County. Look at how many, how many people of Chinese descent live in this area. You're going to probably find less than 0.1%. And it's just, I don't know where this goes. And the longer we go, the child is going to bond with this surrogate mother.

• 46:40Madeleine Baran?

  Brooke said it would be really hard for the baby if she continued to bond with Melissa and then got taken away again. For now, the Virginia court had opted not to decide anything permanent. Brooke told us everyone was waiting for the California judge to rule on whether Sylvia and Guojun would get their children back. Brooke was anxious for California to make a decision, but the hearing kept getting pushed back, likely because of its complexity and scale.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  I hope that California will actually do something. We are kind of stuck here in Virginia, because we need to, we rely on what California is doing about that case.

• 47:21Madeleine Baran?

  Until California made a decision, this baby's future would either be in foster care here or foster care there.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  The child doesn't have permanency, and the child is in limbo. Uh, I just worry about her long-term. And it's just, the longer this goes on, she needs permanency, wherever that is. I just don't want her to be in limbo, and I don't want any of these children to be in limbo. That's, that's the sad part. And, and people see this as a surrogacy case, but they're, they're real children, very real children that are involved, and they deserve peace, and they deserve security and stability and all of those things that normal, every normal child should have.

• 48:13Madeleine Baran?

  A few weeks later, back in California, I called Natalie.

• 48:18Madeleine Baran?

  Um, what's up? You have some news for me? Yeah, I have an update about the case. Actually, I had several. That's next time, on the final episode of The Journey.

• 49:00Madeleine Baran?

  The Journey is written and produced by me, Eva Kaufman, senior producer Natalie Jablonsky, and producer Raymond Tungakar. Samara Freemark is the managing producer for the series. It's edited by Alison McAdam. Additional editing by Willian Davidson and Madeline Barron. Theme and original music by Alex Weston. Additional music by Chris Julin and Alison Leighton-Brown. This episode was mixed by Corey Shrebel. Our art is by Vartika Sharma. Art direction by Aviva Michaelov and Ben Kothi. Fact-checking by In Woo Shu. Our summer research assistant is Ethan Khan.

• 49:43Madeleine Baran?

  Legal review by Fabio Bertoni and Ben Murray. Our managing editor is Julia Rothschild, with additional support from Kiara Ortiz. Thanks also to Parker Yesko. The editor of The New Yorker is David Remnick. If you have any comments or story tips, please send them to the team at [email protected]. And please make sure to follow In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts.