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Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu was found dead in a shopping center restroom in Canning Vale, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, on June 26. The eight-year-old girl had been savagely beaten, stripped naked, raped, and strangled.

Dante Wyndham Arthurs, 21, was arrested early the next morning and charged with sexual penetration of a child, deprivation of liberty, and murder. Arthurs lived with his parents a short distance from the Livingston Marketplace mall, where the crime took place. Evidence against him was embargoed pending a trial.

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n the absence of published facts, scapegoating started at once. Because the killing occurred on the crest of a youth-accented Western Australian crime wave (including the murder of a 15-year-old girl by two young female friends), the shopping-mall murder intensified local demonization of teenage culture. Some moral watchdogs called for suppression of rock bands alleged to instigate sexual violence, such as Cannibal Corpse, scheduled to play Perth in July. Others blamed the internet, perceived home base of "cyber predators" seeking children.

Of glory holes & Underoos

On July 7, The Australian-- a national broadsheet owned by right-wing media magnate Rupert Murdoch-- published a lurid piece by Alana Buckley-Carr that spotlighted Squirt.org, a gay men's hook-up website owned by the Toronto-based Pink Triangle Press, whose publications include The Guide.

Seizing on Squirt's self-description as "the dating site that caters to the sex pig," Buckley-Carr laced her story with insinuation, citing "thousands" of "family-friendly areas across Australia which are ranked for their 'cruising quality,'" and characterizing Squirt.org as a site providing "tips to gay men on how to determine if someone is ready for sex" (whatever that means). At the only Squirt-listed cruising area she describes, the reporter notes that it's "best frequented at lunchtime or mid-afternoon, with the 'cruisiest' spot being the 'toilets on level 2 behind Kidswear.'"

The Australian exposé, triggered additional fevered media coverage. "Death Toilets on Gay Website" trumpeted The Age, a Melbourne-based daily. In Perth, TV newscasts treated viewers to tours of cruisy public loos, implying that gay men frequenting such places might attack children. Law-enforcement officials assured local citizens that a police "cyber predator team" would keep close watch on restrooms at Livingston Marketplace, where security had already been stepped up in the aftermath of the murder.

But while Squirt does list four shopping malls among about 75 cruising spots in the Perth area, it does not list Livingston Marketplace. According to its editors, who have asked The Australian to run a retraction, the website never has. Despite Buckley-Carr's assertion to the contrary, no listing was "taken off" the site following the murder of Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu.

"That the media has focused on a completely unrelated gay website, and as a result detracted from the actual tragedy," reads Squirt's official response, "is unimaginable and despicable. By making this connection, they have absolutely exploited this girl's death to further their own homophobic agenda and to incite misdirected public outrage towards Squirt, towards men who have sex with other men, and towards homosexuality in general."

Squirt's statement condemns the suggestion that gay men are in the habit of preying on children, noting that "One of the oldest methods of repressing the rights and freedoms of a specific group of people is to link them, as a community, to an immoral or tragic event. It is a tactic that is clearly being used by the right-wing media in Australia."

Questionable timing

Openly-gay Democratic politician Brian Greig, who held a senate seat from Western Australia from 1999 to 2005, lodged a complaint against Buckley-Carr and her editors with the Australian Press Council, a body that monitors journalistic ethics. Activists point out that The Australian and other conservative media outlets Down Under are currently waging a propaganda campaign against gay domestic partnership rights and marriage equality.

Rumor conjures fact?

It is not known if accused killer Dante Arthurs is gay, much less whether or not he has ever made use of Squirt.org. Little information has been given to the press about Arthurs's background, or whether evidence against him extends beyond eyewitness accounts of a similarly built man running out of the Livingston Marketplace toilets after the murder.

What is known is that Arthurs seems to have no criminal record of any kind. He does, however, have the dubious distinction of having been misidentified as Robert Thompson, one of the two ten-year-old killers of Jamie Bulger, a toddler abducted at a shopping mall in Liverpool, England, in 1993. (The notorious incident produced its own moral panic focused on "video nasties"-- horror films such as Child's Play, which one of the boys was alleged to have seen-- and resulted in a wave of censorship in the UK.)

Rumors have circulated by fax and e-mail since at least 2004 that Thompson, released and granted anonymity upon turning 18 in 2001, had moved to Australia and assumed a new identity as "Dante Arthurs." The Australian government, however, insists that Arthurs, born in 1984 in Subiaco, Western Australia, has no connection to the Bulger murder. Citing "probation sources," the British Daily Mail reports that Thompson is now in fact "living in the north of England with his gay lover."

Nevertheless, in the blogosphere, the belief that Arthurs is really Thompson persists-- along with faith in the power of music, videos, films, internet chat rooms, and sexually oriented websites to foment rape and murder. "It's part of the wider problem of prevalent porn and sexual arousal through the media," asserts one typical posting on the Rodrigues-Urrutia-Shu killing.

Although Arthurs remains in custody, his parents' home has been repeatedly targeted by brick-throwing vigilantes. The part-time shop employee will appear in court on October 13 to enter a plea.

The Australian government, meanwhile, is considering passage of "Sofia's Law," legislation inspired by the US "Megan's Law," which mandates informing residents of the presence and whereabouts of sex offenders in their communities (see "Sex Offender Registries: Invitation to Vigilantism", July 2006). Perth's southeast metropolitan police district, encompassing Canning Vale, is home to 200 of the 700 sex offenders registered in Western Australia since 2004, when Australia established its national sex-offender registry.

As Australian politicians and their constituents seek draconian but ultimately cosmetic remedies, it remains to be see whether any amount of repression can create a world where every child is safe.