Dad gets 30 years for letting adults have sex with young son

Dad gets 30 years for letting adults have sex with young son

Dec. 9, 2013

Written by

Tim Evans

An Australian citizen was sentenced Monday in federal court to 30 years in prison for his role in a bizarre scheme in which he and his partner made their young adopted son available to at least eight other people for sex.

Peter Truong, 36, was the second person sentenced in the case by federal judge Sarah Evans Barker.

In June, Mark J. Newton, 42, an American who had been living in Australia, was handed the 40-year maximum sentence on federal charges of conspiracy to sexually exploit a minor and conspiracy to possess child pornography.

The case was prosecuted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana because images of sex acts involving the young boy were found on the computer of an Anderson man, said U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett. That discovery was made in a larger child exploitation and pornography investigation.

The child victim, identified in court as Boy 1, was made available for sex with at least eight men from when he was a toddler to about 6 years old, according to court documents.

Newton and Truong were charged in February 2012.

Truong pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges of conspiring to sexually exploit a child and possessing child pornography.

“For more than one year and across three continents, these men submitted this young child to some of the most heinous acts of exploitation that this office has ever seen,” Hogsett said after Newton’s sentencing in June.

Court records indicate that Newton paid a foreign woman $8,000 for her newborn baby in 2005 and that he and Truong then adopted the child.

Videos uncovered by the investigation depicted Truong and Newton engaging in sex acts with the boy when he was about 22 months old, court records revealed. They also traveled to the United States, France and Germany to let others engage in sex acts with the child.

Many of those encounters were photographed and videotaped by Newton or others and distributed to a close-knit group of people in several countries.

Newton and Truong were arrested in California in early 2012.

Testimony in court also revealed the child was coached by Newton on how to respond to investigators to deny any inappropriate activity.

Call Star reporter Tim Evans at (317) 444-6204. Follow him on Twitter: @starwatchtim.