Nurse held for illegal surrogacy service
Print Edition
AN Australian nurse and fertility specialist has been arrested for allegedly running an illegal surrogacy service in Cambodia, the country’s anti-human trafficking police said yesterday.
The arrest was made just weeks after Cambodia became the latest country to ban commercial surrogacy.
Tammy Davis-Charles, 49, was arrested on Friday along with two Cambodians during a raid on a rented house in Phnom Penh, Police Colonel Keo Thea, head of the Anti-Human Trafficking Office, said.
“She has been arrested for being an intermediary in surrogacy and for falsifying documents,” Keo Thea said.
“Australian people who wanted kids would contact her and she would charge US$50,000 for each request,” he said.
Keo Thea said Davis-Charles had moved to Cambodia from Thailand for more than a year, adding she arranged for some 23 Cambodian women to carry babies for Australian couples.
“Five babies have been born,” he said, adding that a Cambodian girl received between US$10,000 and US$12,000 in each case.
Davis-Charles will be sent to court today for questioning. She could face up to two years in jail if convicted.
It was the first arrest for surrogacy in Cambodia, which earlier this month banned commercial surrogacy, after curbs on the industry in other parts of the globe sparked a boom in the unregulated baby business.
Surrogacy agencies started springing up in the Southeast Asian nation after former hubs like Thailand and India blocked foreigners from the services following a flurry of scandals and concerns about exploitation. In one controversy, authorities discovered nine babies in a Bangkok apartment that had been fathered by a Japanese man using Thai surrogate mothers.
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