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 News from Around Banderas Bay | August 2005 
U.S. Man Faces Trial On Child Sex Charges
 Wire services
| | California businessman Thomas White was held over for trial on charges of corruption of minors, underaged pornography, child prostitution and providing drugs to a minor, a Puerto Vallarta judge announced. |
Puerto Vallarta - A San Francisco businessman on Saturday was held over for trial on charges of corruption of minors, underaged pornography, child prostitution and providing drugs to a minor, a Mexican judge announced.
Mexican authorities gathered enough evidence against Thomas White, who was extradited from Thailand and also is wanted in the United States, to go forward with a trial, said Arturo Espinoza, a criminal court judge in Puerto Vallarta.
"We are talking in constitutional terms of a probable responsibility," Espinoza said. "That is, there are sufficient facts to put this to trial."
Attorneys for White denied the charges and said they would appeal the ruling. White attended the hearing on Saturday but did not speak.
Mexican prosecutors have accused White in connection with the sexually abuse of 14 minors in Puerto Vallarta. The minors were first plied with alcohol or drugs, authorities said.
White was arrested in Thailand in 2003 at the behest of Mexican officials.
He founded the brokerage firm Thomas White & Co. in 1978 and owns homes in Puerto Vallarta, San Francisco and Thailand.
A U.S. indictment accuses White of traveling many times to homes outside Bangkok, Thailand, and near Puerto Vallarta to have sex with children.
White is also accused of traveling to Prague, Czech Republic, to produce child pornography, according to the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco.
White was indicted last summer in California on two counts of conspiring to travel overseas with the intent to have sex with children and one count of conspiracy to sexually exploit children.
Traveling overseas to have sex with children is a crime in the United States. Moreover, under an agreement between the United States and Mexico, suspects can be temporarily extradited to face trial in one country, and then be tried in the other country, before serving prison time in either. |
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