Former sex offender defends leaving son
Sydney – An Australian couple have denied they abandoned their son with his Thai surrogate mother after learning he had Down syndrome, saying the woman demanded she be allowed to keep the boy.
Baby Gammy’s surrogate mother, Pattaramon Chanbua, a 21-year-old food vendor with two young children of her own, had accused the boy’s biological parents, Wendy and David Farnell, of leaving her with the baby while taking his healthy twin sister, Pipah, back with them to Australia.
‘‘We did not abandon our son,’’ an emotional David Farnell told Australia’s 60 Minutes. ‘‘[Pattaramon] said that if we tried to take our little boy, she’s going to get the police and she’s going to try and take our little girl and she’s going to keep both of the babies,’’ he said.
Pattaramon denied that she had threatened to keep both children, but agreed she had not wanted the Farnells to take Gammy home.
‘‘I did not allow Gammy to go back with them – that’s the truth,’’ she said yesterday, apparently backtracking from her earlier accusation that the couple had abandoned the baby boy.
‘‘It is because they would have taken Gammy back and put him in an institute.’’
The case became even murkier when it emerged that David Farnell was convicted in the 1990s of multiple sex offences against young girls. Farnell insisted that his daughter was not at risk of harm from him.
David Farnell, who has three children from a previous relationship, said the problems began when they found out before the twins’ birth in December that the boy would have Down syndrome.
The couple were angry that the surrogacy agency had not carried out tests earlier that could have detected the condition, because by the time they found out, it was too late to abort the foetus.
They expected the surrogacy agency to give them a refund and find a solution. That’s when the still-pregnant Pattaramon offered to keep Gammy, Farnell said.
When the babies were born, however, the Farnells said they realised they wanted to keep both. But Pattaramon then insisted she be allowed to keep Gammy, and threatened to keep Pipah as well.
They left Gammy and returned home to Western Australia with Pipah because their visa was running out, they said. Their plan was to fight to get their son by going through the Australian authorities, he said.