Australian ex-lawmaker guilty of sex with child prostitute
A other kind of Tasmanian Devil — this one pictured at Taronga Zoo on June 30, 2010.
Begging the question — when does a 12-year-old girl ever resemble a person of legal age — an Australia ex-lawmaker has been found guilty of having oral sex with a 12-year-old girl sold into prostitution.
Terence Lewis Martin, 54, of Tasmania, had pleaded not guilty to charges relating to the girl, who was prostituted to more than 100 men by her mother and a pimp, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Martin reportedly said he responded to an advertisement for adult sexual services in Hobart's Mercury newspaper, which described the girl as "Angela, 18, new in town."
A Parkinson's disease sufferer, he also reportedly blamed his medication for producing a high libido.
Martin paid the girl to perform oral sex on him and photographed the act at his home in Claremont, north of Hobart, Tasmania's capital.
A Supreme Court jury found him guilty of unlawful sexual intercourse with a young person and producing child exploitation material.
Prosecutors argued that he should have known or suspected the girl was under-age, and that "just couldn't help himself."
According to a report during the trial, it was alleged that Martin told police he did, in fact, jokingly ask the girl her real age.
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