Surrogate 'insisted' she keep Gammy

An Australian couple have denied abandoning their son with his Thai surrogate after learning he had Down's syndrome, saying that 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 infant while taking his healthy twin sister, Pipah, back with them to Australia.

"We did not abandon our son," an emotional David Farnell said in an interview with 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 hd ever threatened to keep both children, but agreed that 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."