Former minister for Aboriginal affairs Milton Orkopoulos provided heroin

Former minister for Aboriginal affairs Milton Orkopoulos provided heroin and held a Year 9 student's arm as the boy injected the drug for the first time, the alleged victim claimed yesterday.The alleged victim said he was about 15 when he first met Mr Orkopoulos at a Labor Party function, and the older man soon began providing him with cannabis and heroin and introduced him to sexual activities. The witness, who testified yesterday in the NSW District Court in Newcastle, is the last of Mr Orkopoulos's three alleged victims to give evidence. Mr Orkopoulos is facing 34 charges of sex with minors under 18, indecent assault and supplying cannabis and heroin. The witness said he was initially invited to Mr Orkopoulos's house for dinner as a Year 9 student in about 1995, and after dinner Mr Orkopoulos shared a cannabis cigarette with him in a shed. "I brought up that I'd been molested when I was a young boy," the alleged victim said, saying Mr Orkopoulos encouraged him to talk about it. The alleged victim, now 28, testified via closed circuit television. He told the court he was still in Year 9, or about 15, and that he had already had sexual encounters with Mr Orkopoulos when the older man took him to a park at night and provided heroin and injecting equipment including needles, spoons and swabs.
"I remember him getting it out and showing me how to go about it, I guess, mixing it up," the alleged victim said, adding that he had never injected anything before. Mr Orkopoulos then performed sexual acts on him, the court heard. Two former NSW parliamentarians told the court they had heard about serious allegations made against Mr Orkopoulos a year before his arrest in November 2006. Former MP Bryce Gaudry said he was telephoned in October 2005 by Mr Orkopoulos's electorate secretary, Gillian Sneddon, who told him of allegations "that involved threats or threats of violence towards a young man from Milton". Mr Gaudry and another former parliamentarian, Jan Burnswood, were told by Mr Orkopoulos that he had already advised the police about the matter, and yesterday Superintendent Michael Kenny told the court that in October 2005 he had been asked by Mr Orkopoulos to warn off a young man who had been harassing him