AUSTRALIA
7 News
ABC
BY COURT REPORTER CANDICE MARCUS
March 19, 2014
Budgetary pressures prevented police from extraditing a paedophile school bus driver from Queensland to face court in Adelaide, an inquiry has heard.
Bus driver Brian Perkins sexually abused up to 30 intellectually disabled students in the late 1980s and early 1990s while working at St Ann’s special school.
He was finally extradited to South Australia from Queensland in 2002, more than a decade after his offending was discovered. He died in prison in 2009.
The royal commission into the case heard the police investigation was shut down, and when police later found out Perkins was living in Queensland, it was deemed too expensive to extradite him.
It also heard that the only reason Perkins was eventually extradited in 2002 was because the Archbishop of the Catholic Church in Adelaide met with the police commissioner about the matter.
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