WASHINGTON, December 10 (RIA Novosti) – A pedophile who purchased a boy from his reportedly Russian mother for $8,000, and then trafficked him around the world permitting other men to abuse him, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison by a US court.
US prosecutors say Australian Peter Truong, 36, bought the child from a “foreign” woman in 2005, USA Today reported.
Although court documents did not state where the boy came from, it is believed that he is Russian, according to The Guardian, Australia’s ABC network and other news sources.
The boy’s birth papers were falsified to list Truong’s domestic partner, Mark Newton, 42, as the biological father, which enabled the men to take the child to Australia, according to ABC.
The victim, who was identified in court only as Boy 1, was then transported around the world and between the age of 22 months and his sixth birthday he was subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of at least eight men, USA Today reported.
Videos of the abuse were filmed and uploaded to an online pedophile syndicate known as the Boy Lovers Network, ABC reported Tuesday.
Truong and Newton were arrested in Los Angeles in 2011, and the boy was taken into protective custody, according to The Guardian.
Truong pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges of conspiring to sexually exploit a child and possession of child pornography. He had faced a maximum of 40 years in prison, while prosecutors requested a 33 year sentence, The Guardian reported Monday.
US district court judge Sarah Evans Barker, announcing the shorter sentence in Indianapolis on Monday, noted Truong’s willingness to cooperate with authorities and lead them to other pedophiles, as well as his own history as a victim of childhood abuse.
Newton, Truong’s partner, was jailed in June for 40 years.
