I wrote about the case of Peter Truong last year. Truong and his partner adopted a boy and groomed him for abuse. They intended him to be their sex slave and set about training him. They even allowed other men to abuse the boy.
A judge sentenced Mark Newton, Truong’s partner and an U.S. citizen, to 40 years in prison. Truong, a New Zealander, was sentenced to 30 years in December:
Queensland paedophile Peter Truong, who bought a newborn boy for US$8,000 and then allowed men around the world to abuse the child, has been sentenced in a US court to 30 years’ jail.
Truong, 36, faced a maximum 40-year sentence, while the plea deal he struck with prosecutors could have allowed a minimum of 24 years.
US district court judge Sarah Evans Barker, in announcing the sentence on Monday in Indianapolis, took note of Truong’s willingness to work with authorities to lead them to other paedophiles and his own history as a childhood abuse victim.
Truong’s own victimization should have no impact on his sentence. At 36-years-old, Truong is far removed from that abuse. Barker made the right decision in sentencing him to three decades. He likely will not serve the complete sentence, however, he will be in his sixties by the time he is released.
I mentioned in my prior post that people should not draw conclusions about gay or adoptive parents based on these two men’s actions. Every couple who adopts a child does not plan to abuse them, and the vast majority of gay people do not abuse children either.
That said, this kind of thing does happen and it is not limited to gay adoptive parents. I grew up in a situation similar to that. My father has implied several times that this was part of his reason for having kids. Given his preference, one wonders what he would have done if he had no sons.
I have yet to understand the reasoning that prompts this sort of thinking. I suspect it is similar to the idea of having a slave in that a person can raise the child to do exactly what they want. However, people do not work that way. Any parent can tell you that thinking you will know what your child will be like is a waste of time. There is no way to know how the child will react. They may rebel, refuse to go along with it, or it could completely backfire and the child can become so passive that it takes the “fun” out of it (the latter I heard growing up).
These are the kinds of people we need to study because I suspect most of them go undiscovered. Sexual abuse cases might catch someone’s attention if the parents are as blatant as the above couple. However, I think most cases go undetected, and some are masked by religious, cultural, and political views. We might consider someone to be “strict” when it is actually much worse than that. We might consider someone to be a “cool” parent when they are emotionally abusive.
This does not mean we should be hyper-vigilant, only aware that things may not always be what they seem to be.
Toy Soldiers 
“his own history as a childhood abuse victim.”
Do we know any more about that?
I agree that…. justice isn’t particularly served by weighing that. But it gets real interesting if you start to see it as a contributing factor to being abusive. Just one of many… not trying to feed the vampire myth.
None of the articles I read said more about it. While I do not doubt that his own history of abuse may have played a role in his actions, I do not see why that should factor into his crimes as an adult. Unless the abuse stopped recently, there would be no direct connection between the two. The only other reasoning I can see is if Truong grew up the same way.
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