AUSTRALIA
Sky News
An assistant police commissioner ordered detectives to stop investigating four pedophiles, the royal commission into sexual abuse has heard.
Detective Sergeant Leonid Mosheev said that in September 1993 he had seized a large volume of material, including pornographic photos, from Adelaide school bus driver Brian Perkins.
But not long after he was directed not to look at the exhibits or continue inquiries, which meant he could only rely on material obtained in August 1991.
He said the direction came from then-assistant commissioner Colin Watkins after Operation Deny was set up in September 1993 to investigate four pedophiles, including Perkins.
‘It was categoric. We were not to investigate to find any more victims,’ Det Sgt Mosheev said on Tuesday at the commission’s Adelaide hearing into Perkins’ sexual abuse of boys at the Catholic St Ann’s Special School for children.
‘We were to finalise our current brief of evidence and we were just to finish that off.’
Officers became angry at the instruction but were ‘scared absolutely out of our wits’ of high-ranking officers and he could not disobey a senior officer, he said.
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