More information is surfacing about the father of the baby of a couple who paid a surrogate to carry their twin babies to term and who wanted him to be aborted after they found out he had Down Syndrome.
LifeNews.com reported on the tragic story last week about the Australian couple who was paying a woman from Thailand to carry their twin unborn babies as a surrogate and who asked the woman to abort one of the babies because testing had revealed one of the babies has Down Syndrome.
The couple enlisted the woman, whose family was heavily in debt, to become their surrogate and to use IVF to become pregnant. She was subsequently found to be pregnant with twins but the initial joy turned to rejection when testing showed a boy nicknamed Gammy was diagnosed with Down Syndrome.
The couple wanted the mother to have an abortion, but she refused and eventually gave birth to Gammy and his twin sister in Bangkok. The couple then refused to take Gammy back with them to Australia and left him in Thailand
Now, new information shows the father was convicted of 22 sex offenses related to children.
David and Wendy Farnell were married in 2004 in Jianjiang and they met through a matchmaking agency after Farnell’s first marriage ended. He was jailed in late 1990s for sexually molesting two girls under age of 10 and, in 1998, he was charged with six counts of indecently dealing with a child under the age of 13 and was convicted and sentenced again.
Now, child safety officials have made a visit to the couple’s home in an attempt to interview them and have been unsuccessful so far.
Here’s more on David Farnell’s sordid history:
Court documents have also unearthed a total of 22 convictions recorded against Farnell on child sex offences.
Farnell was sentenced to three years in jail in 1997 for molesting seven and 10-year-old girls in 1982 and 1983, the ABC reports.
According to the documents, Justice Michael O’Sullivan told Farnell he had ‘robbed the victims of their childhood’ after holding ‘secretive meetings’ with the two girls in a garden shed, added WA Today.
Documents also revealed that while he was in prison, Farnell was convicted on four counts of indecent dealings with a child under the age of 13 during the mid-90s.
Farnell has served prison time for sexually assaulting three girls under the age of 13, crimes which his second wife Wendy said she was aware.
They were married in June 2004 after being introduced by matchmaking website Qpid Success.
They had known each other for eight months and Farnell had travelled to Jianjiang for the wedding.
Zhanjiang Happy Marriage Agency described them as ‘very responsible and sincere to their marriage.’
‘In order to know more about the lady, David came to Jianjiang on 22 June 2004 for their meeting and interaction When the man came again in October of 2004, they held their wedding on 24 October of 2004,’ a statement on the website says.
There has been no sign of the Farnells since the plight of baby Gammy was made public last week.
