Peter Truong (left) and Mark J. Newton in Cairns.

Standing before an American court convicted of the most heinous of child sex crimes, Australian citizen Mark Newton and his long-term boyfriend Peter Truong had their double lives laid bare.

''Being a father was an honour and a privilege that amounted to the best six years of my life,'' the American-born Newton, 42, told the court.

Moments later Newton was sentenced to 40 years in prison for sexually abusing the boy he and Truong, 36, had ''adopted'' after paying a Russian woman $8000 to be their surrogate in 2005.

Police believe the pair adopted the boy ''for the sole purpose of exploitation''.

The abuse began just days after his birth.


''Personally … I think this is probably the worst [paedophile] ring … if not the worst ring I've ever heard of,'' investigator Brian Bone of the US Postal Inspection Service told reporters outside a court in Indiana.


''What can be said? What can be done to erase some of the horror of this?'' Judge Barker said in handing down her sentence.

Newton and Truong gave an interview to an ABC reporter in far north Queensland in 2010 about their battle to have a child as a gay couple.

Their search started in 2002 in the US, where they both were working, and when they did not have any success Truong travelled to Russia and found a woman who they ''clicked with personality-wise''.


The family planned to return to Queensland and live in Cairns but that was delayed because Australian authorities initially refused to grant the child a visa.

That took another 2½ years and upon their eventual arrival in Australia they said customs quizzed them for hours. Police were also sent to the family's house in Cairns to check up on the pair.

In the radio interview, 20 months before their arrest, Newton was asked if he felt the extra attention was because authorities suspected there was ''something dodgy … something paedophilic going on here''.

''Absolutely, absolutely, I'm sure that was completely the concern,'' Newton replied.

Evidence before the US District Court revealed the abuse began before the couple arrived back in Australia. One video is said to show Newton performing a sex act on the boy when he was less than two weeks old.

And while they gave off the perfect image of a modern family to outsiders, Judge Barker said the pair brainwashed the child to believe the sexual abuse was normal behaviour. Newton was also said to have trained the boy to deny any inappropriate behaviour if he was ever questioned by authorities.

''These men submitted this young child to some of the most heinous acts of exploitation that this office has ever seen,'' said Indiana US attorney Joe Hogsett.



While the couple were visiting extended family in the US, Queensland police searched their Cairns home and found enough evidence to alert their American counterparts, who raided their Los Angeles base and took the boy into custody. Newton and Truong claimed they were being targeted because they were homosexual.

However, after arrest in February 2011, Truong gave investigators the password to the computer hard drives police had seized. They detailed the years of abuse, including instances where they had flown the boy between Australia, the US, France and Germany to record at least eight other paedophiles sexually abusing him.

Newton has been given the maximum sentence available in the US for conspiracy to sexually exploit a minor and possessing child pornography. Truong, who also pleaded guilty, will be sentenced shortly.
