PHNOM PENH, July 17 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia's Phnom Penh Municipal Court will pronounce its judgment against an Australian nurse and her two accomplices in a commercial surrogacy case on Aug. 3, the court's presiding judge Sor Lina said on Monday.
Lina set the date for the verdict after a second 3-hour hearing.
Tammy Davis-Charles, 49, director of Fertility Solutions PGD clinic, and two Cambodian helpers - a 35-year-old female nurse and a 28-year-old male staff - were arrested in November 2016 in Phnom Penh.
The court's deputy prosecutor Vong Bunvisoth charged them with "acting as intermediaries in surrogacy and engaging in falsifying documents."
Under the charges, the trio will face up to two years in prison if they are convicted.
In Monday's hearing, Tammy pleaded for mercy, saying that she is battling eye cancer and has little kids to take care at home.
"Since I'm in jail, I have lost 20 kilograms of weight and have been suffering from cancer on my left eye," she told the court. "Moreover, I have two five-year-old children to take care of."
During the first hearing on June 13, Tammy, who is also a fertility specialist, said she operated commercial surrogacy services in Cambodia since early 2014, moving from Thailand when the country banned commercial surrogacy.
She confessed to the court that she had arranged for 23 Cambodian women to carry babies for 18 Australian couples and five American couples.
"In average, we charged a foreign couple 50,000 U.S. dollars for surrogacy services," she told the judge, admitting that she paid 10,000 U.S. dollars to Cambodian women to bear pregnancies on their behalf.
According to Tammy, all born babies had been taken out of Cambodia by their biological parents.
During the first hearing, two surrogate mothers told the court that they were hired by Tammy in 2015 to carry pregnancies on behalf of foreign couples.
"I did it voluntarily, and Tammy provided me a total of 10,000 U.S. dollars when I gave birth to a female baby successfully," Hor Vandy said, adding that she had not seen her baby's face until meeting with the Australian biological father at the Australian embassy.
Cambodia banned commercial surrogacy in November 2016, describing it as a form of human trading.
