Surrogacy Nightmare: Thailand – Australia UPDATED
“A Thai surrogate mother fears for the life of a baby boy, who was abandoned by an Australian couple when they found out he had Down syndrome, after he was rushed to hospital.
Pattharamon Janbua – mother of six-month-old Gammy – was by his bedside as he battled a lung infection, according to Thai Rath.
The Bangkok-based newspaper reported Ms Janbua believed her son’s death was unavoidable.
‘I think the baby will not make it because his lung infection is too serious,’ she told a Thai Rath reporter.
Despite the $50,000 raised for her to pay for Gammy’s treatment, the reporter then gave Ms Janbua money to stay at the hospital to be with her son when she said she did not have enough money to pay for his medical attention.
Earlier on Friday, the surrogate mother was seen breaking down in tears while she spoke about how the baby she was paid to carry was rejected by the Australians.
Pattharamon Janbua has told of her pain for the child, saying she loved the baby boy like he was her own.
The 21-year-old mother – who lives 90km south of Bangkok – had been paid a total of about $16,000 by the couple to give birth to the baby but when she gave birth to twins – a boy and a girl – they only took the girl back to Australia.
Ms Janbua – who already had two other children aged three and six – told the ABC she felt sorry for baby Gammy.
‘This was the adults’ fault. And who is he to endure something like this even though it’s not his fault?’ she said.
‘Why does he have to be abandoned and the other baby has it easy?
‘I chose to have him, not to hurt him.’
Ms Janbua said she treated the six-month-old like he was one of her own children.
‘I love him, he was in my tummy for nine months, it’s like my child,’ she told the ABC.
‘Never think that you’re not my child, that I don’t care for you.’
This came after an online campaign set up for Gammy raised more than $50,000 after his heartbreaking story was shared.
Baby boy Gammy has a congenital heart condition and is critically unwell.
The couple, who have remained anonymous, reportedly told Ms Janbua to have an abortion when they found out four-months into the pregnancy that one of the babies had Down syndrome.
‘I would like to tell Thai women – don’t get into this business as a surrogate. Don’t just think only for money … if something goes wrong no one will help us and the baby will be abandoned from society, then we have to take responsibility for that,’ Ms Janbua said, The Sydney Morning Herald reported earlier on Friday.
The couple paid an extra $1673 when they first realised – three-months into the pregnancy – that Ms Janbua was having twins for them.
Ms Janbua is a Buddhist and thinks abortion is a ‘sin’.
She originally agreed to become a surrogate mother because of her family’s financial problems and the arrangement was set-up through an agency.
The Australian man and his ethnic-Asian wife could not conceive a baby themselves.
Ms Jambua, from a village in Chon Buri province in southern Thailand, gave birth to Gammy and his twin sister in Bangok hospital.
‘Because of the poverty and debts, the money that was offered was a lot for me,’ she told the ABC.
‘In my mind, with that money, we one could educate my children and two we can repay our debt.’
However, when the babies were born the agent took the girl away and delivered her to the Australian couple who Ms Janbua has never met.
She never received the remaining $2341 that she was owed by the agent and is now struggling to keep her baby alive.
A Hope For Gammy campaign was set up on Go Fund Me and has been inundated by donations.
The page pleads: ‘6 month old baby Gammy was born in Bangkok with down syndrome and a congenital heart condition. He was abandoned by his family and is being cared for by a young Thai woman who does not have the funds for his desperately needed medical treatment.
‘Please make a donation so that he can have these operations and improve his quality of life. All monies raised will be kept in trust and will only be used for the care and wellbeing of Gammy.'”
One doctor has donated $3,000 to the cause.
An administrator for the page wrote: ‘Dr Pisit of ALL IVF has made a very generous donation after hearing about the Gammy Story. No ALL IVF Center staff have ever been involved in the Gammy case, but are touched by his situation and wanted to help. Thank you very much.’
Gammy’s tragic story has caused outrage on Twitter.
Richard Long wrote: ‘Takes a bit to make me angry but this story does. what greedy, selfish people.’
Another user, @ChickkinOz, said ‘these people need to be financially responsible for this child and woman for life. Unbelievable, how are they parents.’
While @BCmanutddesi called it ‘OUTRAGEOUS!!
‘This story just makes my blood boil!!,’ @parentingfiles said.
Australians are not the only people that travel to Thailand for surrogacy reasons.
Earlier his year, there were 65 babies stuck in Thailand that were conceived by gay Israeli couples and birthed by surrogate Thai women, the Times of Israel said.
The claims were made by the Facebook group ‘Help Us Bring the Babies Home’.
The babies were allegedly unable to be brought to Israel because the Interior Ministry Gideon Sa’ar has not granted Israeli citizenship to the infants.”
[Daily Mail 8/1/14 by SARAH DEAN and LOUISE CHEER]
REFORM Puzzle Piece
Update:”The biological parents of a baby born to a Thai surrogate mother and allegedly abandoned for having Down syndrome say they did even not know he existed.
Pattaramon Chanbua, the child’s 21-year-old mother, claims that the Australian couple took her son’s twin sister but left him behind because he was sick.
However, the father today told the ABC that they knew nothing about the six-month-old boy and believed that the surrogate had only given birth to a girl.
He also said that Ms Pattaramon was not the woman he believed to have carried his child and that he had had problems with the Thai agency, which has now shut down.
The couple have not been identified but live in Bunbury, in Western Australia. They are expected to release a statement through a lawyer some time in the coming hours.
Gammy’s mother has threatened to sue the family, claiming that the children’s biological father, who is in his 50s, had visited her after she gave birth.
He had only bought milk for the girl, she claimed, and ‘never looked at Gammy’.
‘The twins stayed next to each other but the father never looked at Gammy…could say he never touched Gammy at all,’ she said.
Ms Pattaramon told the ABC that the pair had cried on the day that they collected their daughter from hospital but left their son behind.
She also alleges that they asked her to have an abortion when she found out that she was carrying a child with Down Syndrome.
Gammy’s plight has provoked fury across the world with critics savaging his biological parents. Donations have poured in and now stand at more than $200,000.
Meanwhile the little boy is still gravely ill at Samitivej Sriracha Hospital in Chonburi province, southeastern Thailand.
He is battling a lung infection and, at one point, his birth mother did not expect him to survive.
Australia’s Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has labelled Ms Pattaramon a ‘saint’ and an ‘absolute hero’ and said the outpouring of support was a strong indicator of the way Australians felt about the situation.
Gammy’s story could prompt the Australian government to look closer at surrogacy laws with the Department of Foreign Affairs already examining practices in Thailand.
Agencies were working with Thai officials on the broader surrogacy issues, the department said.
Mr Morrison said the legalities surrounding international surrogacy were ‘very, very, very murky’ and regulations must be looked at carefully.
‘Sure, there are lots of Australians who are desperate to be parents but that can never, I think, sanction what we have just seen here,’ he said.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has also said the case illustrates the pitfalls of international surrogacy.
Commercial surrogacy, where a woman is paid a fee to carry a child, is illegal in Australia.
However, if there is an agreement for the biological parents to cover just medical and other reasonable costs, the practice is legal.
Ms Pattaramon told of her heartbreak at Gammy’s situation, saying she loved the baby boy like he was her own.
‘This was the adults’ fault. And who is he to endure something like this even though it’s not his fault?’ she told the ABC.
‘Why does he have to be abandoned and the other baby has it easy?
Ms Chanbua said she treated the six-month-old like he was one of her own children.
‘I love him, he was in my tummy for nine months, it’s like my child,’ she told the ABC.
‘Never think that you’re not my child, that I don’t care for you
‘I would like to tell Thai women – don’t get into this business as a surrogate. Don’t just think only for money … if something goes wrong no one will help us and the baby will be abandoned from society, then we have to take responsibility for that,’ Ms Chanbua said, The Sydney Morning Herald reported earlier on Friday.
The young mother, who lives 90km south of Bangkok and has two other children, aged three and six, was paid a total of $16,000 by the couple to give birth to the baby.
The couple paid an extra $1673 when they first realised – three-months into the pregnancy – that Ms Chanbua was having twins for them and reportedly told her to have an abortion. Ms Chanbua is a Buddhist and refused to have the abortion on moral grounds.
She originally agreed to become a surrogate mother because of her family’s financial problems and the arrangement was set-up through an agency, which has since been closed down.
The Australian man and his ethnic-Asian wife could not conceive a baby themselves.
‘Because of the poverty and debts, the money that was offered was a lot for me,’ she told the ABC.
‘In my mind, with that money, we one could educate my children and two we can repay our debt.’
[Daily Mail 8/4/14 by SALLY LEE and KATE LYONS and RICHARD SHEARS]
“An Australian man accused of abandoning his surrogate boy in Thailand after learning the baby had Down’s syndrome is alleged to have previously been convicted of child sex offences in Australia, according to a media report.
In a shocking development in the case of six-month-old Gammy, it has emerged that the man apparently spent time in jail for “indecently dealing with a child under the age of 13” in 1998. Channel Nine in Perth reported that the man’s wife, who is of Asian origin, was aware of the conviction. She insisted he “was a good man” despite his convictions.
The couple have insisted they did not know of Gammy’s existence and were only aware of his healthy twin sister, whom they took back to Australia.
Pattharamon Janbua, the 21-year-old surrogate mother in Thailand, has disputed the claim, saying that the father met both children at a hospital in Thailand but refused to touch or look at Gammy.
The Australian couple have not spoken on the record.”
Australian accused of abandoning surrogate baby previously convicted for child sex offences[The Telegraph 8/4/14 by Jonathan Pearlman]
Update 2: “Child protection officers have finally made contact with paedophile David Farnell and his wife Wendy, the Australian couple at the centre of the baby Gammy surrogacy scandal, three days after they vanished from their home.
A spokeswoman for Western Australia’s Minister for Child Protection told Daily Mail Australia officials had got in touch with them.
‘They have made contact,’ the spokeswoman said but refused to clarify whether they had met in person or spoken over the phone.
Also on Thursday, the son of Farnell, a convicted paedophile, defended his father, telling the Sydney Morning Herald that it was ‘heartbreaking’ his father’s dark past was being revisited.
‘He’s taken 10 years to get his life back on track and he did and he has done so well and this, this has been shattering,’ the unnamed son was quoted as saying.
‘I can tell you how good of a father my dad was towards us. He’s amazing,’ the unnamed son was quoted saying.
‘He’s brought out the best in all us kids. He’s just got a massive heart. He’s made mistakes, we’ve accepted it… he’s made up for them.’
His comments came after it was revealed Farnell was convicted of 22 child sex offences, including one against a girl who was just seven. The sentencing judge said the victims had been ‘robbed of their childhood’.
It had earlier been reported that David John Farnell, now 56, had been sentenced to three years’ jail in 1997 for sexually molesting two girls under the age of 13 and that months later, while still in prison, he was charged again, this time with six counts of indecent dealing with a child under the age of 13.
But further court documents have revealed other sex offences, bringing the total number of convictions against him to 22 – including a victim aged just seven.
The charges include ‘unlawful and indecent dealing’ with girls when Farnell was in his 20s.
Farnell was sentenced to three years jail in 1997 for sexually molesting two girls in ‘secretive meetings’ in his shed or house, in 1982 and 1983, when the girls were aged seven and 10.
It was not until the women were adults that they made complaints and court documents said the women had suffered ‘depression’ and ‘difficulty forming relationships’ as a result of the abuse.
In sentencing him, Justice Michael O’Sullivan said the victims had been robbed of their childhood and had suffered emotional problems as a result.
The judge noted that Farnell had pleaded guilty to the charges, had no previous criminal record and was a ‘hardworking and constructive member of the community.’
He added: ‘You have a stable family life, which is an irony, really, in the particular circumstances of this case, given that you appear to have robbed the complainants of an opportunity to have such a life.’
Months later, while Farnell was still in prison, he was charged again , this time with indecent dealings with a child under the age of 13.
The jury found him guilty on four counts.
Farnell is divorced from his first wife who is the mother of his three older children.
An electrician who works in the South Bunbury area on house renovations, recently lost his own father, Keith, who is believed to have been in his eighties.
His widowed mother, Theresa, lives in a house not far from Farnell, his wife and their baby girl.
An electrician who also works in South Bunbury said most people working locally in the trade had not associated with Farnell since they learned he had been convicted of child sex charges and served a jail sentence.
‘I saw him a year ago. He does renovations and bits and pieces around the place,’ Trev of Bricknell Electrics told Daily Mail Australia.
‘He’s a bloody idiot for staying in town. Bunbury is a very small place and too small for someone like that [a convicted sex offender].
‘He should have got out of town years ago.’
Trev said it would be hard on Theresa Farnell ‘with this on top’ of husband Keith’s recent death.
Keith Farnell was described as a good man, who was a long time employee of SCM Chemicals, now Millennium International Chemicals.
His funeral notice said of him, ‘A better bloke, you would never find’
David and Wendy Farnell have not been seen since it emerged they abandoned Gammy in Thailand and returned to Australia with his healthy twin sister.
On Wednesday, officers from the Department of Child Protection and Family Services made a second visit to the Farnells’ home in an attempt to interview them.
While they have not been seen since Monday, a spokesman from the department said they were not considered missing.
Two people officers arrived at the home, knocked on the door and left when no one responded.
Earlier on Wednesday, the RSPCA was forced to remove the Farnell’s pet dog from their home in Bunbury in Western Australia because they had been away from their house for a long period of time.
RSPCA WA spokeswoman Maree Daniels said: ‘Given the circumstances it was thought to take the animal into our care for its own safety.’
Ms Chanbua, who could face prosecution for her involvement in the surrogacy arrangement, said she did not know commercial surrogacy was illegal in Thailand.
‘I did not know before that it’s illegal because when I look up in the internet there are many websites in Thailand doing this business so it seems reliable to me,’ she said.
‘I did not really know that it’s illegal before.’
Ms Chanbua said she met David and Wendy Farnell three times after she gave birth to the twins.
She did not have contact with them during her pregnancy or beforehand and dealt only with the surrogacy agency.
Ms Kamonthip, the Thai agent, declined to answer questions from the Daily Mail Australia, instead directing a number of accusations at the surrogate mother.
She claims that before the Australian parents flew back home, they told Ms Chanbua they wanted to take both babies.
‘Why didn’t you give the boy back to the biological parents?’ she posed to Ms Chanbua in an email to Daily Mail Australia”
Ms Kamonthip continued: ‘If you have had sad experience about being surrogate, why did you recruit surrogate mothers for some agencies just two months ago?
‘If the agency or parents owe you any money, why didn’t you go to the police earlier? Why did you do anything earlier?’
Pip Panasbodi, a consultant at CP International Education and Migration Centre, said Ms Kamonthip used to work at the firm but quit to get into the ‘booming’ international surrogacy trade.
Ms Kamonthip says on her Linked In profile she still works at the firm but Ms Panasbodi said she resigned in January 2013.
‘I remember when she resigned she said the surrogacy industry was booming and some American people wanted to get her involved,’ Ms Panasbodi said.
She had previously said she wanted Gammy’s twin sister to come back to Thailand but on Tuesday said she could not comment on that ‘because it is related to the law’.
David and Wendy Farnell were married in June 2004 after being introduced by matchmaking website Qpid Success.
They had known each other for eight months and Farnell had travelled to Jianjiang for the wedding.
Zhanjiang Happy Marriage Agency described them as ‘very responsible and sincere to their marriage.’
‘In order to know more about the lady, David came to Jianjiang on 22 June 2004 for their meeting and interaction When the man came again in October of 2004, they held their wedding on 24 October of 2004,’ a statement on the website says.
This comes after the Farnells claimed they ‘never wanted to give him up’ but feared they would lose his twin sister if they stayed in Thailand.
A friend of the couple told the Bunbury Mail that claims the pair left Gammy behind because he had Down syndrome were false and the Farnells only fled Thailand because the government in Bangkok collapsed.
‘Gammy was very sick when he was born and the biological parents were told he would not survive and he had a day, at best, to live and to say goodbye,’ the statement said.
Ms Pattharamon, who is now caring for Gammy, accused the couple of only taking his healthy twin sister back home to WA.
Earlier this week, the couple denied knowing of six-month-old Gammy’s existence and said they only had a baby girl.
Farnell’s wife has confirmed her husband had a conviction but she believes he is a good man.
On Tuesday, the Farnells said they never asked Ms Pattaramon to have an abortion, that they did not know Gammy had Down syndrome and that they only left the baby boy in Thailand because they were told he was going to die.
They claim that because Ms Pattaramon gave birth at a smaller hospital instead of the one they planned their surrogacy agreement became void.
The twins were allegedly born two months premature and the Australian couple said they no longer had any legal rights over them.
The Farnells were able to have a baby via an overseas surrogate, despite David Farnell’s criminal history.
There are currently no tests to see if new parents are convicted paedophiles and local authorities do not automatically investigate the parents of children born overseas, except for authorities in the state of Victoria.
Two neighbours who spoke to the Daily Mail Australia said they had been aware of the father’s past child sex charges.
‘We’ve known about it for years,’ one local said in Bunbury, 180km South of Perth, in WA.
‘This is pretty much a street of retirees and everyone pretty much keeps to themselves.’
Another neighbour said while she was aware of the allegations, she had no idea they had a baby.
Authorities look at children born via overseas surrogates on a case by case basis, meaning sex offenders can bring home children from Thailand.
It has been reported by Channel Nine that the WA-based mother used her married name on Gammy’s birth certificate but her maiden name on her baby daughter’s documents.
The only obstacle the Australian couple would have faced in bringing the child home to Australia is a DNA test with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This test is only in place to prevent human trafficking.
If DFAT is concerned with findings on a DNA test it then raises the issues with the local child protection authority.
‘If you are going to a dodgy agency in Thailand no questions are asked,’ Brisbane-based surrogacy lawyer Stephen Page told Daily Mail Australia.
Mr Page said if the couple had gone to the United States for surrogacy they would not have been legally allowed a child. There are strict rules in the US when it comes to convicted child sex offenders.
Gammy’s twin sister may be able to continue to live with her Australian father if child protection authorities deem he is no longer a risk, Mr Page said.
He explained that the couple would not be able to use an overseas surrogate if they lived in Queensland, NSW or the ACT because the practice is illegal. In Victoria, a parent with a criminal conviction is automatically banned.
The lawyer, who works with Australians who are trying to have children from every state, said he always asks people who come to him for help in going through surrogacy overseas if they have criminal convictions as he doesn’t want to ‘facilitate paedophilia’.
He pointed to the case of Australian citizen Mark J. Newton and his long-term boyfriend Peter Truong who are currently serving 40 and 30 years in an Indiana jail, in the United States, after they were convicted of horrific child sex crimes.
They sexually abused a boy they had ‘adopted’ after paying a Russian woman $8,000 to be their surrogate in 2005.
Police claimed they adopted the boy ‘for the sole purpose of exploitation’ and recorded uploaded footage of his abuse to an international syndicate known as the Boy Lovers Network.
He was abused just days after he was born and throughout his six years with the couple.
‘They claimed they were wonderful gay parents who wanted to be surrogates,’ Mr Page said.
Asked whether he thinks child protection will intervene in the case of Gammy’s sister, Mr Page said: ‘Who knows what will happen?
Earlier this week, Ms Pattaramon threatened to sue the family, claiming Farnell had visited her after she gave birth.
He had only bought milk for the girl, she claimed, and ‘never looked at Gammy’.
‘The twins stayed next to each other but the father never looked at Gammy…could say he never touched Gammy at all,’ she said.
Ms Pattaramon told the ABC that the Farnells had cried on the day they collected their daughter from hospital but left their son behind.
She also alleges that they asked her to have an abortion when she found out that she was carrying a child with Down Syndrome.
Gammy’s plight has provoked fury across the world with critics savaging his biological parents. Donations have poured in and now stand at more than $200,000.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2718652/Gammys-parents-finally-contact-welfare-officers-revealed-paedophile-father-convicted-22-child-sex-offences.html[DAily Mail 8/7/14 by SARAH MICHAEL and DANIEL PIOTROWSKI and CANDACE SUTTON]
“The contact follows days of speculation over the couple’s whereabouts.
In a separate discovery, nine babies were found in a Bangkok flat, with a lawyer claiming they were all surrogate babies fathered by a Japanese businessman.
‘Safety plan’
Child protection officers reached the Australian pair after trying for the past few days.
Western Australia Child Protection Minister Helen Morton told Fairfax Radio on Thursday: “We’ve had telephone contact with the family and we’re in the process of putting other arrangements in place.”
The department had no “major” concerns at present, but would consider how to ensure the safety of the baby girl, Gammy’s sister, she said.
She urged the media to give the family “privacy and confidentiality” in the meantime, adding that at this stage there was no evidence of anything illegal about the surrogacy arrangements.
‘Good father’
According to court documents, the man was convicted in the 1990s for the sexual assault of several young girls.
However, his adult son, who did not wish to be named, told local media that the man was a “good father” who had changed.
“He’s just got a massive heart. He’s made mistakes, we’ve accepted it… he’s made up for them,” he said.
The case of baby Gammy has made international headlines and caused uproar in Australia.
Besides Down’s syndrome, the six-month-old has a congenital heart condition and a lung infection.
Surrogate mother Pattharamon Chanbua, who has been looking after Gammy, said the couple had asked her to have an abortion when she was told of the child’s condition four months after becoming pregnant.
She said she refused, as it was against her Buddhist beliefs. Abortion on the grounds of foetal impairment is illegal in Thailand.
Ms Chanbua, 21, has said the father met the twins, but only took care of the girl.
The parents have told local media in Australia that they did not know of his existence, and claimed that the allegations made by Ms Chanbua are lies.”
Thai surrogate baby Gammy: Australian parents contacted[BBC 8/7/14]
Recent Comments