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AAP
AAP
National
Jack Gramenz

Former MP gave boy drugs before sex abuse, trial told

Milton Orkopoulos has pleaded not guilty to 28 charges including sex offences against underage boys. (Bianca De Marchi/AAP PHOTOS) (AAP)

Former NSW minister Milton Orkopoulos allegedly introduced a teenage boy to heroin and sexually abused him when he came back for more, a Sydney jury has heard.

The 65-year-old has pleaded not guilty to 28 charges, including sexual offences against underage boys he allegedly supplied drugs to over the course of a decade, ending in 2003.

Evidence was read in the NSW District Court on Tuesday from a transcript of previous answers given by a man who is not a complainant in Orkopoulos' trial, but says the former minister supplied him drugs and abused him sexually when he was a boy.

It is called tendency evidence and is sometimes used when the court permits to demonstrate a person is prone to acting in the way they have been accused.

Judge Jane Culver told the jury on Tuesday it was merely an invitation from prosecutors to consider whether the evidence makes allegations from the complainants more likely, while the defence argues it does not.

The transcript read to the court describes a boy meeting Orkopoulos at a party celebrating the election of his parliamentary predecessor Jill Hall.

He was invited for dinner after he started seeing Orkopoulos' stepdaughter, who was a year above him at school.

After dinner Orkopoulos invited him out to the shed.

"We had a glass of wine each and then he asked me if I smoked marijuana," the transcript read.

He got very stoned after smoking the hydroponic cannabis, stronger than the "leaf and tip" he had smoked before, and then told Orkopoulos a secret.

"I brought up I'd been molested as a young boy ... up until that day I hadn't told anybody," he said.

Orkopoulos brought up the past abuse when the boy later sought more cannabis from him.

After supplying the teenager cannabis, Orkopoulos allegedly asked him if he had ever tried heroin.

The boy felt ill and sat in the front seat of Orkopoulos' car after smoking a joint with heroin in it.

He started squirming and tried to appear "out of it" as Orkopoulos allegedly unzipped his pants and performed a sex act on him.

"I was trying to make it difficult for him to do whatever he was doing," his evidence read.

He said Orkopoulos gave him the rest of the heroin, which he began using.

Orkopoulos allegedly told him not to buy the drugs himself because he could provide them for free, later encouraging him to inject heroin and instructing how to do so, holding the boy's arm as he shot up for the first time.

He allegedly forced the then-teenager to perform oral sex on him, before raping him in the back seat of the car and then telling him not to tell anyone.

Following his descent into drug use and the alleged abuse he suffered from Orkopoulos, the boy dropped out of school and moved out of his grandparent's home.

"I hated what I'd become," his evidence read on Wednesday.

"I felt like a prostitute and a drug addict."

Orkopoulos was the MP for Swansea from March 1999 until November 2006, when he was booted from cabinet and expelled from the Labor Party.

The trial continues.

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