Gay father abuses own son
The gay fathers of a six-year-old Australian boy have been arrested in Los Angeles after being indicted on child sexual exploitation charges relating to their own son.
The men, a US citizen and resident of Queensland in his 40s, and his partner, an Australian citizen in his 30s from north Queensland, were arrested in a 6am raid at a house in Los Angeles, on Thursday morning.
A third man, a lawyer from Florida, has also been arrested and indicted, and is named as the lead defendant. He is further charged with procuring a boy aged between eight or nine for sexual exploitation.
The indictment alleges the gay couple’s son was induced and coerced by all three defendants to appear in sexually explicit images and videos, either by himself or with the lead defendant.
All men are charged with counts of conspiracy to sexually exploit a child and the sexual exploitation of a child. The indictment carries no direct information on what the seized material allegedly depicts.
The boy is a joint Australian and US citizen with grandparents and relatives both in both Queensland and the United States.
In October last year, Los Angeles police pulled another Australian man, a friend of the couple's, who was driving on a freeway with the boy in the car after taking him for a museum visit. This man has not been arrested and has returned to Australia.
The boy was taken in the custody of the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services and has been in their care since.
The boy’s fathers have vehemently protested their innocence.
Both men claimed they were being victimized as gay fathers. Both claimed they were not aware of any explicit material involving their son.
The couple said they thought the authorities had some harmless video material of their son fooling around which had been misconstrued as sexual material.
The indictment claims the men knowingly gave the third man access to the boy for explicit sexual purposes and that material was distributed on the internet.
One of the men's father, speaking from Brisbane, and who was at the home in California when the arrests were made last week, said he was shocked to see the pair handcuffed and led away wearing little but their underpants.
He said he was deeply concerned that his son would be persecuted in prison as a child molester.
He saw his grandson at a supervised visit the afternoon before the arrests and is anxious for the boy. “I don’t think he’s OK. He’s Australian – he’s grown up here in north Queensland.”
One of the men's mother said she had nursed her grandson since he was three weeks old and strongly believed he had never been molested by his parents.
“I’m so close with him,” she said of the boy. “I know him inside out. I know everything about him. He is a happy and healthy boy. We want him home. If he was adopted out to strangers it would be a disaster for both our families.”
The American man's father, speaking from Arizona, said he had been unable to talk to his son since his arrest, and both families were trying to regain shared custody of the boy.
“It’s affecting all of us,” the man said. “Because he’s our grandson. We’re trying to get him here in Arizona. He’s got cousins, uncles and grandparents. He’s an Australian citizen but he’s also a US citizen. He’s our biological grandson.”
The couple are in the custody of US Marshalls in a federal detention centre.
Three associates the men were arrested in an international child porn internet swoop last year, which may have been the genesis of the case against the couple. They claim they had no knowledge of their acquaintances’ alleged activities.
It is understood the fathers, who were represented by public defenders at a brief hearing on the day of their arrest, will be shifted from Los Angeles to Indianapolis, Indiana, where the grand jury indicted the three men.
One of the charges relates to an alleged incident on October 21, last year, in Indiana.
The child protection agency and the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, a division of US Homeland Security, declined to comment on the case.
In conversations and correspondence, the fathers were distraught that their son, who had been born to a surrogate mother, had been taken from them. They said they were only allowed strictly supervised visits and insisted their son had made no complaints of abuse.
The Queensland man's mother said that the LA children’s department claimed the boy had been subjected to “years of sodomy”, which she said was ridiculous. She said she was a constant presence in the boy’s life and would know if anything was wrong with him.
Court documents show the US man has asserted his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to remain silent.
The fathers' Queensland home was raided in October, where computers were seized. However, it appears no detrimental information was gathered from the raid.
Family members said there was a court hearing relating to the future of the child held in LA last Tuesday, at which no new information against the two dads was forthcoming.
This appears this provoked US authorities to act, holding a grand jury session in Indiana the following day, where charges were laid.
