Ex-Boy Scout Leader John Wrenshall Ran Thai Brothel for Pedophiles
Talk about your international incidents.
John Wrenshall, the weasely little sleazeball at left, was a Boy Scout leader — and now he’s a guest of the United States for the next 25 years.
The short version: Wrenshall, a former Calgary Scout leader and boys’ church choir leader, is a Canadian who ran a brothel for pedophiles in Thailand, was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport on his way back to Canada, was extradited to the U.S., and, after pleading guilty to multiple charges including engaging in sex tourism and producing child pornography, was sentenced to prison in New Jersey.
The creep whined that he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in prison — and it appears U.S. District Judge Dennis Cavanaugh fell for it: “Judge Cavanaugh,” reports the National Post, “said he didn’t give Wrenshall the maximum penalty only because of his advanced age.” Wrenshall is 64.
Yet that’s in spite of the fact that Wrenshall had already been convicted of child sexual abuse in Canada — twice — once in 1970 (he got off with a a measly suspended sentence and two years’ probation), and again in 1997 after sexually abusing eight members of a boys’ choir in Calgary over the course of some three decades (for which he got one lousy year in the can, and another two years’ probation).
How was he allowed to run free after all that? Beats us. While we still have the utmost respect for the Canadian justice system, we have to wonder… and we’re not the only ones wondering. Rosalind Prober, president of Beyond Borders (”a national, bilingual, volunteer organization advancing the rights of children everywhere to be free from sexual abuse and exploitation”), told the Post that “the fact that Wrenshall was able to travel internationally even though he served jail time for the sexual abuse of young boys in Canada is a symptom of the lenient treatment sex offenders receive in [Canada].” (In fact, Prober went on to praise the U.S. by comparison for clamping down on sex tourism.)
Prober echoes Benjamin Perrin, who wrote in the Post the previous October that “Canada’s reputation makes it easy for child sex offenders to travel abroad and sexually abuse children, ” and noted that “Wrenshall was successfully prosecuted in the United States … because some of his ‘customers’ were American; no thanks to Canada, which allowed this convicted sex offender to freely travel abroad.”
Nevertheless, you can’t blame Canada for failing to lock Wrenshall up and throw away the key this time; the reduced sentence was, after all, solely the decision of a U.S. judge.
Meanwhile, one of Wrenshall’s “customers,” Wayne Nelson Corliss of New Jersey — described by the Post as “an actor and former children’s entertainer who often played Santa Claus” (shades of Greg Nies, no?) — is also rotting away in the pen. Per the Post:
Wrenshall … first came to U.S. authorities’ attention in early 2008, after photographs showing [Corliss] sexually abusing young Thai boys were released to media outlets by Interpol — the second time in history the international police organization had made such a public appeal.At that time, agents belonging to the Homeland Security Investigations branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement learned that Corliss … had travelled to Wrenshall’s Bangkok home to engage in illegal sex acts.
Corliss later pleaded guilty to five charges, including the production and possession of images depicting child sexual abuse, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison in November 2009.
Two other “clients”, Burgess Lee Burgess of Mobile, Alabama, and Mitchell Kent Jackson of Pensacola, Florida, both of whom had traveled to Wrenshall’s Thai pedo-brothel, each received six and a half years in prison. “During trial,” reports the Post, “the men said they met Wrenshall and Corliss in an Internet chat room for men interested in having sex with boys.”
We say: We say… We say we’re so disgusted, we don’t know what to say.
Here, by the way, is the DOJ’s indictment — which details far more disgusting details than you’ve read here.
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