Phnom Penh: Australian nurse Tammy Davis-Charles broke down in tears and said she had lost everything at the end of her trial on surrogacy charges in the Cambodian capital on Monday.
"I lost 20 kilos. I have left eye cancer. My youngest sons said they didn't see their mother coming home," Ms Davis-Charles told the court. "I have lost everything for what I have done."
Ms Davis-Charles' lawyer, Chheang Sophoan, asked the judge to drop charges against her, saying the evidence was unclear.
"There was a lot of supposition ... there were no available accounts and answers from those intended parents. Please, drop all charges against my client," he said.
Ms Davis-Charles told the court her company Fertility Solutions PGD was only responsible for caring for the surrogate mothers and that another company was responsible for screening and preparing paperwork, such as the contracts between intended parents and surrogate mothers.
But in a statement, prosecutors called for Ms Davis-Charles to be convicted, saying the intending parents had paid her $US50,000 ($63,880) for each child.
"She became an intermediary to recruit the Khmer women to become surrogate mothers," they said. "She has been involved in the process of paperwork from the beginning until the day the surrogate babies were taken out the country, with the aim of making profit."
Police allege Ms Davis-Charles, a 49-year-old mother of six from Melbourne, falsified documents, including birth certificates, to smooth passage of surrogacy paperwork through Cambodia's murky legal system and the Australian embassy in Cambodia.
For more than a year Ms Davis-Charles ignored warnings from the Australian government that commercial surrogacy was illegal in Cambodia.
Police allege that Fertility Solutions PGD signed at least 25 surrogacy agreements, most of them with Australian biological parents.
Ms Davis-Charles was arrested with two Cambodians in October last year as police cracked down on more than 50 surrogacy clinics and brokers in Phnom Penh.
She was sent to the Prey Sar prison on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where conditions are harsh.
A Cambodian man who worked for Ms Davis-Charles told an earlier hearing of her trial that she was the source of hundreds of dollars that he paid to a village official to obtain birth certificates on behalf of Australian biological parents that police allege were falsified.
He also testified that Ms Davis-Charles paid him hundreds of dollars to arrange travel documents so that surrogate parents could take their babies home from the impoverished country.
Witnesses told the court that surrogate mothers went to the Australian embassy in Phnom Penh to finalise paperwork that would give custody to the biological parents, but that Ms Davis-Charles stayed outside.
Hour Vanny, one of the surrogate mothers, said she did not understand official proceedings at the embassy because no interpreter was present. She said after giving birth her baby girl was taken from her and she did not see her face until meeting with the Australian biological father at the Australian embassy.
Ms Davis-Charles, who has appeared distressed during the trial hearings, denied the accuracy of a police account of an interview with her last year.
"The majority of it I deny," she said from the dock, wearing an orange prison uniform.
Ms Davis-Charles testified that she had 18 Australian and five American clients and that "three or four" were same-sex couples.
All the surrogate babies had already left Cambodia, she said, without detailing the circumstances of their departure. "I looked after the surrogate mothers to make sure they were safe," she told the court.
Ms Davis-Charles testified that she was advised by lawyers at the time of her operations that surrogacy was still legal.
After Ms Davis-Charles' arrest more than 100 pregnant Cambodian surrogates fled their homes, fearing they could also be arrested.
Cambodian authorities are now insisting that intending parents must go through a court verification process before they can take their babies home.
The court is scheduled to deliver its verdict on August 3.
