AUSTRALIA
ABC News
A South Australia police officer has admitted to the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse that if he had checked for previous convictions or outstanding warrants for paedophile Brian Perkins he would have been arrested early in the investigation of the abuse of as many as 30 boys at the St Ann’s Special School in the early 1990s. Detective Sargeant Leonid Mosheev also told the Commission it was absurd to suggest police had told the school not to tell parents of the abuse allegations.
Transcript
MARK COLVIN: A South Australian police detective has admitted to the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse that mistakes in an investigation helped a paedophile bus driver named Brian Perkins avoid justice for several years.
The commission is investigating how Perkins was able to flee South Australia in 1993 after abusing as many as 30 intellectually disabled boys at the Adelaide Catholic Special School, St Ann’s.
Most of the families didn’t find out for more than a decade that their sons were most likely among Perkins’ victims.
But officer Leonid Mosheev is adamant that police never told the Catholic school not to tell other parents of the abuse allegations.
Samantha Donovan reports.
SAMANTHA DONOVAN: South Australian Police were first alerted to the possibility Brian Perkins may have been abusing at least one student at St Ann’s Special School in August 1991.
The Royal Commission heard today that the mother of a 19-year-old female former student of the school had reported that Perkins had been paying the girl to take topless photos of her and had asked her to appear naked in photos with the witness known as LH, then an intellectually disabled teenager at the school.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.