FORMER Swansea MP Milton Orkopoulos was "like a wolf in sheep's clothing" and used his position of power to "prey" on four young boys, providing them with drugs so he could sexually assault them and "keep them coming back for more", a jury has been told.
Mr Orkopoulos, 65, is on trial in Sydney's Downing Centre District Court accused of indecently and sexually assaulting four boys at Belmont, Caves Beach and Swansea between the mid-1990s and early 2000s, including two who attended his electorate office to ask him about building a skate park.
He has pleaded not guilty to 28 charges including aggravated indecent assault, committing an act of indecency, supplying a prohibited drug, sexual intercourse with a person aged between 10 and 16 and doing an act with intent to pervert the course of justice.
During her closing address on Thursday, Crown prosecutor Cate Dodds told the jury the case against Mr Orkopoulos would turn on the evidence of seven witnesses, the four complainants and three other tendency witnesses, against the word of the former politician.
Ms Dodds said each of the witnesses claimed Mr Orkopoulos had indecently or sexually assaulted them when they were children growing up in Lake Macquarie and each said he had provided them with cannabis, heroin, money or cigarettes.
"Our case is that the possibility of seven independent witnesses making allegations that are so similar by chance or coincidence is so remote that the only explanation is that the accused acted in the same way towards each of them, and that therefore their accounts are true," Ms Dodds said. "That the only explanation for the degree of similarity in their independent accounts is that they are true accounts of what the accused did to each of them. The accused, on the other hand, says no such sexual activity took place while any boy was underage. The accounts given by these boys who gave evidence before you as men and the accused's account, they don't sit together. Somebody is not telling the truth and the Crown says that somebody is the accused."
Ms Dodds took the jury through the evidence in the trial, highlighting the similarities between a number of the cases.
She said the former politician would encounter the boys in Lake Macquarie, including through his role as an MP and before that Lake Macquarie councillor, speak to them about using drugs, take them to an isolated spot where they would use cannabis and then he would sexually assault them.
"It's all part of the accused modus operandi," she told the jury. "You might think it's a pattern of behaviour to provide young boys with drugs, sexually assault them when they are drug affected and keep them coming back for more."
Ms Dodds said each of the boys were "shocked, confused and embarrassed" after they were abused and did not tell anyone because of Mr Orkopoulos position of power and because he gave them money or drugs and told them to keep it a secret or that no one would believe them.
"None of them say anything," Ms Dodds said. "He tells them not to say anything so they don't and he keeps doing it, getting more brazen in the belief that no one is going to challenge respectable, friendly Milton Orkopoulos, councillor of the east ward, MP for Swansea and ultimately minister for aboriginal affairs."
Ms Dodds said one boy, who says he was repeatedly sexually assaulted after speaking to Mr Orkopoulos about funding for a skatepark in Swansea, trusted Mr Orkopoulos because he was an adult and was "meant to be a model citizen".
"Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, affable, easygoing, friendly, approachable," Ms Dodds said. "Milton Orkopoulos, an adult cloaked with the respectability and importance of his position in the community, has preyed on [this boy] who did not see the danger until it was too late and failed to appreciate its seriousness."
"I had no interest in underage boys," Mr Orkopoulos said.
Mr Orkopoulos' defence barrister, Paul Johnson, is expected to deliver his closing address on Friday.
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