Baby boy bought for $8000 for sex had adult sexual awareness by 22 months

A QUEENSLAND man who bought a baby boy for $US8000 and shared him with other pedophiles committed crimes that “simply shock the conscience”, prosecutors have told a US court.

A QUEENSLAND man who bought a baby boy for $US8000 and shared him with other pedophiles committed crimes that “simply shock the conscience”, prosecutors have told a US court.

Peter Truong, 36, faces a maximum 40-year sentence, but could get as little as 24 years when he goes before a judge in Indianapolis next week.

The former Cairns resident has entered guilty pleas to one count of conspiracy to sexually exploit a child and conspiracy to possess child pornography.

Truong’s partner, Mark Newton, 42, also from Queensland, was jailed in June for 40 years.

“Essentially, Newton and Truong bought a child, falsified the circumstances of his birth and citizenship, sexually abused him to such a degree and so early in his life that by 22 months old, the child’s sexual awareness as depicted on video rivals that of an adult,” US prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

Newton and Truong met in the US in the late 1990s, a romance bloomed, and around 2003 they looked for ways to adopt an infant boy, according to prosecutors.

In 2005, they allegedly came across an advertisement by a woman in a “foreign” country who was pregnant and willing to sell the child for $US8000.

Authorities began to look at Truong and Newton in 2011 after the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs conducted a forensic search of a computer seized from a Kiwi and found chat logs referring to Truong, Newton, the boy and live streaming video of the boy engaged in sexual acts with another boy.

Australian and German authorities also investigated a trip Truong, Newton and the boy took to Germany.

Prosecutors will ask that Truong be sentenced to 33 years’ imprisonment, although under the plea agreement he could receive a term as low as 24 years.

Prosecutors will file under seal their reasons for recommending a sentence lower than the 40-year maximum.

The boy, who today is eight years old, was placed in the care of the Los Angeles County Department of Child Services when Truong and Newton were arrested in LA in 2011.