A Fountain Valley woman wanted to kill her daughter by suffocating her with a plastic bag when she was 10 and repeatedly sexually abused her son, starting when he was 6, a prosecutor argued Monday, while the defendant’s attorney said her ex-husband “coached” the children to fabricate the allegations.
Yan Zhang, 45, is charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child, child abuse and endangerment, and attempted murder, all felonies. She also faces a sentencing enhancement for attempted premeditated murder.
The defendant is accused of pulling a plastic bag over the head of her daughter in an attempt to kill her and attacking her with a jump rope, cleats and a roller beginning when she was 10 to 15 years old, according to Deputy District Attorney Alyssa Marie Staudinger. She is also accused of molesting her son for years, the prosecutor added.
The daughter was a reluctant witness, Staudinger acknowledged in closing arguments of Zhang’s trial Monday.
“She didn’t want to be here,” Staudinger said. “She didn’t want her mom punished. … She just wanted a mom.”
And yet the daughter testified about seeing “evil” in her mother’s eyes when she was enraged, Staudinger said.
Part of the evidence in the trial was video taken by the father.
“You can see the rage in her eyes,” Staudinger said. “The complete detachment.”
Zhang would at times withhold food from her daughter, the prosecutor said. If the family ate at 6 p.m., her daughter might not get fed until 9 p.m., she said.
The prosecutor pointed to the testimony of the defendant’s son, who recalled how his mother was angered when his sister pinched him in the car on their way home.
“The whole rest of the afternoon was just beating my sister,” he testified.
The daughter said hours of whipping with a jump rope left her with a pain level of eight on a scale up to 10, Staudinger said.
Her brother “saw bruises everywhere, lashing marks from the jump rope,” Staudinger said.
The daughter testified she had a U-shaped whip mark on her left calf and inner thigh from the jump rope lashing, Staudinger said.
Her brother testified the girl also had lacerations from an attack involving her cleats, but the daughter said the cleats didn’t pierce the skin, according to the prosecutor.
Staudinger said that while some of the details from the witnesses diverged, the core of their allegations were the same.
Staudinger argued that Zhang, “without provocation,” came up behind her daughter and slipped a plastic bag over her head while she was “kneeling” against a wall for disciplinary reasons.
“Even at 10 years old she knows this is dangerous,” Staudinger said. “She was trying not to cry to preserve oxygen.”
It doesn’t matter whether the defendant was trying to frighten her or kill her, she can still be found guilty of attempted murder, Staudinger argued.
“There are a lot of ways of scaring your kid without putting a bag over her head,” Staudinger said.
The defendant’s ex-husband wanted to keep the family together and “lived in fear” of Zhang, Staudinger said. Zhang threatened to “pin everything n him if he called police,” according to the prosecutor.
The couple managed to negotiate a divorce with little acrimony initially. She was paid $100,000 and he got custody of the children with Zhang allowed visitation, Staudinger said.
“All she wants is money,” Staudinger said. “She gets 100 grand and she walks away.”
But when her son “blocked her number” and his sister also said she did not want to see their mother, the father pressed them for details why, the prosecutors said. At the end of September 2023, the son came forward with the allegations of sexual abuse, Staudinger said.
In November of that year, at the recommendation of police, their father sought a temporary restraining order against Zhang, Staudinger said.
Defense attorney Rachel Gelber argued that the son and daughter provided “inconsistent statements” over the years and “cannot be relied upon” for evidence.
“There’s no corroborating evidence,” she said.
For instance, she argued, the son said he took pictures of his sister’s injuries, but they were later deleted. The father said the same thing, she added.
The father placed surveillance video cameras in nearly every room of their Fountain Valley home but none of that footage was used as evidence, Gelber argued.
Jurors may frown on Zhang’s disciplinary tactics, but that doesn’t mean she broke the law, Gelber said.
The daughter, son and father all had a “stake in the outcome” of the trial, Gelber said.
“This isn’t corroboration, this is coordination,” she said.
The son offered differing accounts of the plastic bag incident over the years, Gelber said. At first he said he didn’t see it, and then later said he walked in on it, prompting his mother to take it off, and then later said there were holes in the bag because his sister tore it off of her, Gelber argued.
The daughter also provided differing accounts of the bag, Gelber said.
“I don’t know why everyone keeps asking me about the plastic bag. I can’t remember… It wasn’t that traumatic,” the girl testified, according to Gelber.
“How can we convict someone of attempted murder when the alleged victim can’t even remember what happened,” Gelber said. “This is not justice. … This is dangerous to our justice system. … To convict someone of attempted murder on evidence this thin sets a dangerous precedent.”
The father was motivated to “coach” his children to accuse their mother so he could keep control of the home he inherited from his mother, which was worth millions of dollars, Gelber argued.
The children were closer to their father, the defense attorney said.
“They would have pool parties,” she said. “They had access to their devices. … He bought them a puppy.”
The defense attorney explained away the molestation allegations as the defendant cleaning up or checking on her son, who was having issues with bed wetting and soiling himself because he would forget to relieve himself before bedtime.
Zhang’s son testified that he was molested three or four times a week, starting when he was 6 and ending when he was 12.
“I just said no,” he testified. “I’ll take the beating. I’ll take the time out.”
He testified that his mother would have him touch her breasts and also suck on her breasts.
“I would pretend to breast feed,” he testified.
That stopped when he was 8 or 9, he said.
Afterward, Zhang would tell him, “I’m free to go, I’m no longer in trouble,” he testified.
When asked how he viewed his mother, he said, “It was weird. … I definitely saw her as my mom. But me and my sister were both scared of her.”
He said his father would mainly take care of them and his mother would merely watch them.
“She would cook for us, but it was mainly for herself and we would eat what she would eat,” he said.
Zhang “favored” her son for cultural reasons, he said, adding that she was angry with her daughter “all the time.”
At times they would be forced to kneel on a “spiky” uncomfortable carpet for hours “begging for forgiveness,” he said.