Former NSW politician Milton Orkopoulos has been found guilty of sexually abusing teenage boys while he was a state Labor MP.
A jury found the 65-year-old guilty of 26 charges of sexual offending against four underage boys and supplying them with drugs over a decade, ending in 2003.
Orkopoulos was found not guilty on one count of supplying prohibited drugs and one count of doing an act to pervert the course of justice.
The jury delivered its verdict on Wednesday after starting deliberations a day earlier.
During the trial, the court was told Orkopoulos used the same pattern of behaviour with his alleged victims, including initiating the grooming by asking whether they had smoked cannabis and apologising later when the sexual activity got too rough or painful.
Orkopoulos was motivated by his sexual desire for young boys and he acted on those desires opportunistically, the prosecutor said.
When convinced of his victims' confidence, the predator would become more brazen and move onto harder drugs like heroin to groom the boys.
Orkopoulos served as a representative on the Lake Macquarie City Council from 1995 to 1999 before being elected as member for Swansea in the NSW Hunter region from 1999 until 2006.
In 2005 he was appointed Aboriginal affairs minister and minister assisting the premier on citizenship in the NSW Labor government.
He was dismissed by then-premier Morris Iemma in November 2006 after he was charged with his first round of offences which included child prostitution, sexual assault, and using taxpayer money to pay a teenage boy to have sex.
The state government passed legislation to suspend parliamentary pension entitlements for any member who resigns when charged with serious crimes prior to the resolution of the charges or is convicted.
Orkopoulos resigned as a MP soon after his dismissal and attempted suicide.
In 2006 he pleaded guilty to possessing child abuse material and to supplying a year 12 boy with drugs in parliament house.
In March 2008, he was sentenced to 13 years and 11 months in jail with a non-parole period of nine years and three months after he was found guilty of 28 offences relating to sexual assault of a minor, indecent assault, and supplying heroin and cannabis.
An attempt to appeal his conviction in 2009 was rejected, though his sentence was reduced to 13 years and eight months.
In 2017, Orkopoulos' parole was rejected because he had failed to attend rehabilitation.
He was released on parole in 2019 before being arrested in June 2020 for the 28 historical offences examined in Wednesday's verdict.
Orkopoulos will be sentenced at a later date.
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