Paedophile MP Milton Orkopoulos refused parole for not attending rehab

FORMER Labor state government minister and convicted paedophile Milton Orkopoulos has been refused parole for failing to complete a sex offenders course.

Former NSW Labor politician Milton Orkopoulos at his 2008 trial.

FORMER Labor minister and convicted paedophile Milton Orkopoulos has been refused parole for failing to complete a sex offenders course.

The Sunday Telegraph has been told a case manager for Orkopoulos put his name down to do the course but the former Aboriginal ­affairs minister has so far refused.

It is understood his failure to complete the course was a key reason the NSW Parole Board refused an early release in December last year.

Prison sources said Orkopoulos, 59, was maintaining his innocence and refusing to address his offending behaviour.

On December 16 last year, the Parole Authority determined that until such time as Orkopoulos completed a therapeutic program to address his sexual offending, ­release to the community was not appropriate.

Orkopoulos is next up for parole in January 2018.

Former Labor MP Milton Orkopoulos.

The former Carr government minister was jailed in 2008 for almost 14 years for 30 child sex and drug charges, ­including homosexual assaults on a minor, child pornography possession, having sex without consent and supplying prohibited drugs.

The imprisonment of the quietly spoken left-wing Swansea MP was the start of a downward spiral for NSW Labor, with a series of scandals besetting the party for almost a decade.

Orkopoulos, whose crimes stretched between 1995 and 2006, is understood to be working fulltime as a clerk at Kirkconnell Correctional Complex, a minimum-security jail in Western Sydney.

He was relocated to the prison after being bashed in 2015 at Cooma jail.

A source said Orkopoulos was studying for a higher education certificate of “information management” after his bid to study “library practice” was rejected.

While the latter course lends itself to a variety of post-release jobs, it is understood that working in a library would require a Working With Children Check, which applicants with recent child-sex convictions often fail.

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While serving his sentence, Orkopoulos has also been working as a tutor, teaching maths and English to fellow ­inmates, many from non-­English speaking backgrounds.

He pleaded guilty to supplying cannabis and possessing child pornography, but fought the remaining charges, with his defence team arguing that sentences for some of the sex charges were harsh given the age of consent for male homosexual sex was later lowered to 16.

He has been in jail for ­almost nine years.