INDIANAPOLIS – Nearly three years after a major news network described two homosexual men and their young son as a “happy, relaxed family,” one was sentenced to prison this past weekend on sexual exploitation charges and the other is awaiting to hear of his fate.

While living together in Queensland, Australia, in 2005, American Mark Newton and New Zealander Peter Truong hired a Russian surrogate mother to give birth to a child for them. In July 2010, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) published a story about the “family,” detailing the “many hurdles” that the homosexual men overcame to obtain the child.

“We decided that we would have a child, that it was time for us to have a family,” Truong told the ABC reporter. “We wanted to experience the joys of fatherhood.”

The article further details how Australian police initially investigated Newton and Truong’s house in 2005 to make sure the men could raise the boy in a safe environment. Authorities eventually gave the two men a green light, even though—as stated in the ABC report—“[Newton] said he’s sure that they were under suspicion of pedophilia.”

“We’re a family just like any other family,” Newton told the reporter at the time.

However, details of wanton sexual abuse have since emerged, and police reports now detail a very grim situation in which the young boy was regularly molested—even from his infancy.

Investigators say the homosexual men began sexually abusing the child when he was 22 months old, and after that point, they molested him on a daily basis. When the child was between the ages of two and six, Newton and Truong traveled to France, Germany, and the U.S., offering him to at least eight members of an international pedophile ring. In addition, the two men videoed many of their exploitative acts, afterwards posting them on pornographic websites.

Two of the pedophiles have been arrested already, but Queensland police officer Jon Rouse told Australia’s 7.30 news that his team will pursue all possible participants in these acts “to the ends of the earth,” just to “make sure each and every one of them faces justice for what their role has been in crimes against this child.”

“The purchase of the child for the explicit and sole purpose of exploiting him across a network of men is incredibly depraved and a very sad tale for that little boy,” he stated.

When police first uncovered evidence of the sex crimes and began investigating Newton and Truong, the two men claimed that they were being targeted just because of their homosexuality. But Detective Inspector Jon Rouse of the Queensland police’s anti-pedophile task force rejected the allegations.

“If you’re harming a child—I don’t care what your gender is—we will take action. Our interest is the child, not your sexual preference,” he told Seven News.

Truong’s official charges are still forthcoming, but last week Newton was sentenced to 40 years in prison in an Indianapolis court. According to the Daily Mail, the presiding judge in the case, Sarah Evans Barker, accepted a plea agreement only because the videos obtained as evidence were too horrific to show a public jury.

Outside the courtroom, Brian Bone of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service told reporters that this situation was “one of the worst [pedophile] rings … if not the worst ring I’ve ever heard of.”

While on trial, Newton apologized, but then stated that “being a father was an honor and a privilege that amounted to the best six years of my life.”

However, Judge Barker was less optimistic.

“Words don’t help,” she stated. “What can be said? What can be done to erase some of the horror of this?”

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