SYDNEY, July 3, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Police in Australia have described as "depraved" the
case of a six-year-old boy who was sexually abused by his adoptive
homosexual "fathers" and other men who were part of an international
child-porn syndicate known as the Boy Lovers network.
Authorities in Australia and the US worked together to arrest and
charge the men after it emerged that the boy had been offered to men in
Australia, the US, France and Germany for sexual exploitation and the
production of child pornography from a very young age.
Last week one of the men, an American named Mark J. Newton, 42, was
jailed in the U.S. for 40 years and ordered to pay $400,000 in
restitution to the child, while the other, Peter Truong, 36, from New
Zealand, awaits sentencing in his home country.
"None of these cases are very good," Detective Inspector Jon Rouse, who
heads Australia’s Queensland Police Taskforce Argos, which investigates
online child exploitation and abuse, told the AFP news agency.
"What's pretty sad about this one is the way this child came into their
lives. It's just really a tragedy. It's extremely depraved."
According to reports, Newton and Truong, living in Cairns, Australia at
the time, began looking for a surrogate mother to give birth to a child
in 2002.
The same-sex couple finally found a woman in Russia who gave birth to
their child for a fee of $8,000. Mark Newton is believed to be the
biological father of the boy, dubbed "Adam" in order to protect his
identity.
Adam was handed over to Newton and Truong five days after his birth in 2005.
Australian media covered Adam's arrival home, describing the two men as happy, loving fathers.
In a case of bitter irony, in one article
Mark told a reporter that authorities had questioned he and Peter at
length when they first brought Adam to Australia, and that he was sure
that they were under suspicion of pedophilia. But, he said, "We're a
family just like any other family."
On July 14, 2010, when Adam was 5 years old, ABC Far North Queensland
broadcast a story titled "Two dads are better than one" which stated
that "becoming parents was hard work for gay couple Pete and Mark, but
they'd do it all over again if they had to.”
"We decided that we would have a child, that it was time for us to have
a family," Newton and Truong told ABC. "We wanted to experience the
joys of fatherhood."
"It's a happy, relaxed family," ABC said, "but it wasn't an easy road
to get there. After many hurdles, [Adam] was born by surrogacy in
Russia."
Russian news service RT Novosti reported that Adam began to be sexually abused by his same-sex ‘dads’ when he was 22 months old.
"Later on," RT Novosti reported, "they made Adam available for sex with
other members of the pedophile ring in Australia, France, Germany and
the US, for which Newton and Truong had to travel extensively. Police
investigators have found proof of at least eight men in these countries
having contact with Adam when he was between the ages of two and six."
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Two other men, American residents John R Powell, 41, a Florida-based
lawyer, and Jason Bettuo, a 36-year-old Michigan tennis coach, have also
been charged, according to Australia's Channel 7 News.
Police began the investigation that led to the arrests after a chance
discovery of suspicious images during a raid on the home of a child sex
offender in Wellington, NZ.
Australian police said the images themselves were not illegal, but were recognized as "modelling shots."
Further investigations unearthed chat logs between Newton and Truong and other members of the Boy Lovers network.
When police raided the homosexual couple's home in Cairns they found
enough evidence on computers and other video devices to ensure their
arrest. Adam was removed and placed in foster care.
At his sentencing hearing, held in District Court in Indianapolis,
Newton told the court that, "being a father was an honor and a privilege
that amounted to the best six years of my life," according to the NY Daily News.
US District Judge Sarah Evans Barker responded, "Words don't help ...
What can be said? What can be done to erase some of the horror of this?"
Judge Barker added that she felt Newton deserved a more severe sentence
but that he was tried at district court level to save a jury from
having to look at the images produced by the defendants.
"These men submitted this young child to some of the most heinous acts
of exploitation that this office has ever seen," said Indiana U.S.
Attorney Joe Hogsett, after the hearing.
Russian Ombudsman for Children’s Rights, Pavel Astakhov, told RT
Novosti that the Russian government is tightening up adoption laws to
prevent another case like Adam's.
“Russian orphans always attracted foreign perverts because of
accessibility. The foreigners were simply coming and taking children for
money,” Astakhov said.
In December 2012, Russia passed the ‘Dima Yakovlev Law’ that banned American citizens from adopting Russian children.
In June 2013, the state Duma passed an amendment
that bans the adoption of Russian children by same-sex couples from
abroad and forbids single people who are citizens or permanent residents
of countries that allow same sex "marriage" to become adoptive parents
or legal guardians of Russian children.
Russia itself does not allow same sex "marriage" and the country’s
authorities have passed a number of regional and federal bills banning
the promotion of homosexual and other sexual aberrations to children.
