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August 3rd, 2017 
Awake Goy 
nsnbc : Australian citizen Tammy Davis-Charles and two Cambodian associates will spend the next 18 month behind bars for running an illegal, unregistered surrogacy center in Cambodia.
Ms Tammy Davis-Charles and associates were sentenced in a court in the Cambodian capital Phom Penh on Thursday, nine months after Davis-Charles and associates were arrested.
The three acted as intermediaries between local women and foreign couples, mainly from Australia, seeking to become parents. Besides running the center illegally and unregistered, without supervision by Cambodian authorities, the three were also charged with falsifying documents. The couples paid Davis-Charles as much as $50,000 for her services, with the surrogate mothers receiving $10,000 to carry the children.
Following up on the arrest of the trio, in December 2016, Ms. Chou Bun Eng, Cambodia’s Secretary of State at the Interior Ministry and Vice Chair of the government’s Committee to Fight Human Trafficking stressed that people, including surrogate mothers and parents involved in the scheme should come forward now as it wasn’t her of the government’s intention to punish those who registered a surrogacy pregnancy and did it legally, under supervision, excluding human trafficking, and safeguarding the health of mothers and children. She said: “If they come forward now, they can continue to work with any hospitals that they have been using. … If they try to hide from us, it means it is a crime.”
The son of the Australian convict, Mr. Charles, claimed in December that Cambodian women hired by his mother’s firm were receiving ongoing care. “Surrogates are a little stressed but are being taken care of, they are getting paid still also. .. The sooner this is over, the safer for them and the babies,” he said.
That said, registering the mothers, the parents, and the involved clinics, practitioners and brokers, and putting the “business” under government supervision would widely be regarded as a minimum requirement to guarantee that the rights, the interests, the health, and the social well-being of all of the involved parties, including the children are taken care of.
In November 2016 Bung stated that Cambodian officials were seeking the clients and mothers hired by arrested Australian broker Tammy Davis-Charles. Ms. Charles and two of her Cambodian associates, Penh Rithy, 28, a Commerce Ministry officer, and nurse Samrithchan Chariya, 35, were arrested in the capital Phnom Penh by anti-human trafficking police who said they had spent 10 months investigating her business, Fertility Solutions PGD.
Foreign couples that hired Cambodian surrogate mothers through Ms. Davis-Charles were encouraged to identify themselves, with officials saying they could take their children home if they stepped forward and took responsibility for them. However, no prospective parents had yet presented themselves, said Bung after reiterating her appeal from last month.
Southeast Asia has been a popular destination for would-be parents overseas, thanks to much lower costs than other nations. However, Thailand banned the practice after numerous allegations of exploitation, with Cambodia doing likewise last year. The trade has shifted to neighboring Laos, which has yet to ban or restrict commercial surrogacy and it is blooming in India where it is – in some cases – relatively well-supervised and regulated.
CH/L – nsnbc 03.08.2017
Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/08/03/australian-woman-sentenced-for-running-illegal-surrogacy-center-in-cambodia/
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