Ruth Institute Blog

The who lived in Australia and the United States for trafficking their adopted surrogate baby and using him to make paedophile pornography ought to provoke questions about the wisdom of same-sex adoption and marriage.

Mark J. Newton, 42, American-born, but an Australian citizen, and his long-term partner Peter Truong, 36, an Australian, were arrested in Los Angeles in 2011. The facts of the case, which was tried in Indiana, have just emerged after Newton was sentenced to 40 years last Friday. Truong is awaiting sentencing.

The abuse was so appalling that the case was tried at a district court level to avoid subjecting a jury to the repellent images.

Media reports only provide a sketchy outline of the story. However it appears that Newton and Truong, who were based in the Queensland city of Cairns, began searching for a surrogate mother in the US in 2002. There they were unsuccessful. But in 2005 they found a Russian woman and paid her US$8,000 to bear a child. Newton was the biological father. The mother handed the child over five days after birth.

The pair began sexually abusing the child when he was less than two weeks old. They also took him around the world and allowed him to be abused by at least eight men in several countries. Photographs and videos were uploaded to a paedophile site. The men told the child that the abuse was normal behaviour and coached him on what to say if he were ever questioned.

American police say that the child was created “for the sole purpose of exploitation”. “Personally… I think this is probably the worst [paedophile] rings… if not the worst ring I’ve ever heard of,” was the comment of an investigator from the US Postal Inspection Service.

The child is now in foster care.

Abuse of infants and children is not confined to homosexuals. But Newton and Truong actually portrayed themselves in the media as champions of gay rights. Under the headline “Two dads are better than one”, the ABC (Australia) described the idyllic world of their son in 2010. “Becoming gay parents was hard work for Pete and Mark but they’d do it all over again if they had to,” the ABC journalist wrote. “It’s a happy, relaxed family scene. But it wasn’t an easy road to get there. After many hurdles [their son] was born by surrogacy in Russia.”

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