Milton Orkopoulos: Father of alleged victim claims he wrote to Kevin Rudd
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has been drawn into the scandal surrounding convicted pedophile and ex-MP Milton Orkopoulos.
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The father of one of Milton Orkopoulos’ alleged victims claimed he tried to alert Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd that another MP had covered up warnings that Orkopoulos was preying on children.
But the former PM says he has no memory of being informed of any complaint reaching his office.
Orkopoulos this week was charged with multiple child sexual offences including indecent assault and prostitution involving two boys aged 11 to 12-years-old.
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The former NSW minister and member for Swansea was arrested in prison where he is in the final stretch of a decade-long sentence for unrelated crimes against other underage boys.
The father of one of the recent complainants made allegations in 2014 that his son had also been abused by Orkopoulos decades earlier and claimed the matter had not been properly handled by police or the Labor Party.
The father claimed he wrote to Mr Rudd, then the prime minister, in 2009, naming a Federal MP he said was made aware in 1997 that Orkopoulos allegedly abused his son.
The father says he told the prime minister’s office the MP had continued to conceal the allegation for a decade and had never been held to account. He claims he received a response from an adviser saying it was inappropriate for the PM’s office to interfere in state matters and he should contact law enforcement.
But a spokesman for Mr Rudd said thousands of messages reached the office of the prime minister each week and he has “zero recollection” of hearing such information.
“Mr Rudd’s office as prime minister would have received thousands of items of correspondence each week,” the spokesman said. “These were routinely dealt with either by the correspondence unit attached to the Prime Minister’s Office, by staff members or by the public service.”
Mr Rudd said he had no recollection of hearing any rumours about other victims nor recalls any engagement with any other MPs about the matter.
“The staffer’s purported advice (to the father) was to take the matter to state law enforcement, as opposed to in any way concealing the matter or letting it drop,” the spokesman said.
There is no suggestion Mr Rudd ever received the letters personally.
Orkopoulos was languishing in prison in 2009 a year after he’d been locked away for abusing other boys but the father, in his allegations, said he was seeking justice for his son as well.
A set of separate allegations laid out by NSW Police, which will be tendered in Orkopoulos’ court proceedings, say Orkopoulos molested the boy in a shower in either 1993 or 1994.
The boy divulged the alleged abuse to his father in 1996, police allege, and that sparked complaints to authorities.
NSW Police allege the boy spoke with investigators but wasn’t comfortable with it proceeding further.
The police document alleges the boy believes he signed away his complaint against Orkopoulos while in the presence of his mother and another Labor MP at the MP’s home in 1997.
The father, in his own allegations, says his son can’t recall if he complied with the request to retract the allegation but the boy was left in close contact with Orkopoulos in the following years.
The father claimed he had also tried to alert another NSW MP in ’96 or ’97 but that MP denied any knowledge when the scandal broke.
Legal letters from Orkopoulos followed, warning him to stop spreading “untrue statements”, the father said.
The father said it was beyond his comprehension that Orkopoulos, with his son’s accusations hanging over him, was able to be selected by the Labor Party to run in Swansea in 1999.
The father died in 2014, the year his allegations surfaced.