US to seek local talks over sex-abuse boy
US to seek local talks over sex-abuse boy
BY:ANDREW FRASER From: The Australian July 01, 2013 12:00AM
US child protection authorities will consult their Australian counterparts when deciding the future of an eight-year-old boy from Cairns whose adoptive parents have been found guilty in a US court of exploiting the child for sex.
The US Postal Inspection Service, which is a legal body, on the weekend announced that Mark Newton, an American man who had been living in Cairns, had been sentenced to 40 years' prison after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to sexually exploit a minor and conspiracy to posses child pornography.
His male partner, Australian citizen Peter Truong, has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing on charges of conspiring to sexually exploit a child, as well as charges of possessing child pornography.
"The minor's legal parents transported the child to three continents, including the United States, and sexually exploited the child multiple times," said the US statement.
Material uncovered by the investigation shows that the child was made available for sex to at least eight men when he was between the ages of two and six, with the two adopted parents engaging in sex acts with the boy when he was 22 months old.
Many of those encounters were photographed and videotaped by Newton or others and distributed to a close-knit group of people in several countries.
US Federal Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker said she accepted the plea agreement because the crime was too horrific for a jury.
The court heard that in 2005 the two men paid $8000 to the Russian mother of the child to adopt him, and they brought him to Australia to live.
The court also heard how the two men took the young boy overseas where he was sexually abused by other men, with some of the abuse being filmed and shared on an online network.
The US statement said that the investigation revealed that in 2010 and 2011, Newton and Truong travelled with their child to the US and other countries to meet other men who abused the child, and high-definition digital cameras were used to record the abuse.
The investigation started when New Zealand authorities found suspicious pictures on the computer of a New Zealand man in August 2011, and police there alerted Queensland Police Task Force Argos, an Australian service branch that targets child exploitation.
Officers from Argos attempted to talk to the two men in Cairns, but at that time they were in Los Angeles, as they regularly travelled.
After investigations in the US, the boy was taken into care and the men formally charged in February last year.
A Queensland Police spokesman said yesterday that the child's future was still uncertain.
"He has been the victim of horrific abuse, but his main support has come from the two men who abused him. It's a very delicate situation, and we're still investigating the circumstances of how he came to be adopted in the first place," the spokesman said.
After the child was taken from the two men in the US in 2011 they claimed they were being victimised for being homosexual.