http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/family-judge-warns-pedophiles-exploiting-surrogacy-laws/story-fn59niix-1227033721488?nk=83a5aa2cbe3dafc9d599f7e98c31d23eFamily judge warns pedophiles exploiting surrogacy laws
Natasha Bita
PEDOPHILES are using international surrogacy to “commission’’ babies for abuse, Federal Circuit Court Chief Judge John Pascoe has revealed.
Likening surrogacy to the sex trade, he warns that Australians who pay surrogate mothers overseas can never be sure they were not exploited.
“Although these women may appear to be voluntarily offering their service to unsuspecting Australian commissioning couples, the reality can be quite different,’’ Chief Judge Pascoe states in advice to the Family Law Council.
“It is therefore of little weight when commissioning couples assert ‘our surrogate wasn’t exploited’, as the reality is that in the absence of any regulatory scheme they cannot be sure.
“As is the case with human trafficking for the sex industry, traffickers looking for potential surrogate mothers prey on rural women who they compel to move to major cities to be exploited.’’
Judge Pascoe and Family Court Chief Justice Diana Bryant yesterday challenged state governments either to prosecute parents who breached the ban on commercial surrogacy, or to make it legal.
“In our view, if governments do not want to enforce these laws, they should be repealed,’’ the judges say in a joint statement.
“Courts being asked to make parenting orders are placed in a difficult position where there is clear illegality by the Australian ‘parents’ but there is uncertainty about whether action will be taken by the relevant authorities.’’
The judges repeat their call — revealed in The Australian on Thursday — for governments to legalise and regulate commercial surrogacy in Australia.
“We understand the powerful desire to become a parent, but it ought not be at the expense of the welfare of the child or surrogate mother,’’ they state.
“Regulation (in Australia) could provide fairness in contractual arrangements, proper provision of health cover for the surrogate mother, and a rigorous eligibility criterion with the appropriate checks and balances for contracting parents.’’
The judges warn that the case of baby Gammy — a Down syndrome baby abandoned with his surrogate mother in Thailand after his West Australian parents took his healthy twin sister home — was “not an isolated one’’.
Altruistic surrogacy is legal throughout Australia but commercial surrogacy is banned everywhere except in the Northern Territory, which has no surrogacy laws. In Queensland, couples risk three years’ jail for paying a surrogate more than her medical costs. The penalty is two years’ jail in NSW, Western Australia and Victoria, and one year in South Australia and the ACT, while Tasmania imposes a $13,000 fine. No one has been prosecuted.
In his submission to the Family Law Council’s review of surrogacy laws, Chief Judge Pascoe criticises the “not in my backyard’’ attitude of legislators.
“It would appear that governments in Australia are already giving tacit consent to commercialised arrangements in their refusal to enforce the law against those who openly flaunt it,’’ his submission states. “Ignoring the problem does nothing to assist the vulnerable women and children outside of Australia.’’
The Chief Judge warns that lack of regulation in many countries “creates a risk that children could be ‘commissioned’ specifically for trafficking or abuse purposes’’.
“Tragically this is a risk that has too often been realised,’’ he says.
Chief Judge Pascoe quotes from a UNICEF report that suggests that one in four inter-country adoptions in Germany has a “commercial or criminal background, some of which have links to facilitating pedophilia’’.
Chief Judge Pascoe says Australian parents might be unaware a surrogate mother has been exploited or abused. “It is not uncommon for many commissioning parents to never meet the birth mother,’’ he says.
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