Quotes from

Minister sacked over child sex charges

Alarm first raised a year ago

Russell Skelton, The Age, November 9, 2006
With JONATHAN PEARLMAN and AAP

A SLEW of child sex charges involving drugs and prostitution against a minister in the NSW State Government has plunged it into crisis.

Aboriginal Affairs Minister Milton Orkopoulos, who was immediately sacked as a minister and told to resign from the Parliament, appeared in court yesterday charged with 30 sex and drug offences, involving two teenage boys.

Members of a police taskforce arrested Orkopoulos, 49, at 7.30am yesterday at his home in Belmont, on NSW's central coast.

Charges include indecent assault, child prostitution and homosexual intercourse involving minors aged 10 to 18, and supplying prohibited drugs.

Police alleged he used government money to pay an 18-year-old $250 a week for sex and regularly supplied him with cannabis, beginning in 1997 when the boy was 15.

Court documents said Orkopoulos occasionally supplied amphetamines to the alleged victim, whose drug addiction meant he was unable to hold down a job.

[...]

Mr Iemma [another minister, alleged for speeding offences] stressed his abhorrence of sexual crimes against children. "Let me say now that there is no worse crime than child sexual assault."

Two months ago, Orkopoulos expressed a similar sentiment, describing child sex assault as humanity's greatest crime.

"Every person in the community has to shoulder the responsibility for the protection of children from abuse," he told a parliamentary committee investigating Aboriginal communities.

Orkopoulos is married with three children. He was elected in 1999 and has been Aboriginal affairs minister since last year.