Francis Neville (Frank) Arkell (13 September 1935 – 26 June 1998) was an Australian politician. Arkell was a long-serving Lord Mayor of Wollongong and an independent member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, representing Wollongong. In 1998 Arkell was violently murdered in his home, aged 62 years by Mark Valera. At the time of his death, he was under police investigation for child sex offences.^[1] Continued investigation largely cleared Arkell of wrongdoing, with police concluding that a tape that supposedly recorded Arkell making sexual advances to a teenager had in fact been faked by former Wollongong mayor and pedophile Tony Bevan as blackmail.^[2] Arkell was a Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy, according to his biography on the Parliament of NSW site.

Early life

Arkell was born on 13 September 1935 in Port Kembla, New South Wales.^[3]

He grew up in a modest house out on the swamplands south of Wollongong, within walking distance of the Port Kembla steelworks that was built in the 1920s and which employed his truck-driving father through the Depression and beyond.^[2]

The Arkells sent their sons to the local Christian Brothers College. This school was described by local activist and politician Paul Matters as an environment where a culture of sexual abuse and abuse of power was normalised, which occurred alongside the school's repressive approach to sexuality and morality.^[2]

Political career

Between 1974 and 1991, Arkell served as Lord Mayor of Wollongong City Council. He was elected as an independent to represent the seat of Wollongong in the New South Wales Parliament from 1984 until his defeat at the 1991 election.^[3]

Later life and death

In October 1996, Franca Arena asked in state parliament whether Arkell was the person known to the Wood Royal Commission as W1 in allegations involving paedophilia.^[4][5]

In 1998, seven years after he had left politics, Arkell was murdered at his home in Wollongong by Mark Valera.^[6][7] Arkell's head had been smashed in with a bedside lamp, an electric cord was wrapped tightly around his neck, and tie-pins protruded from his eyes and cheeks. According to a subsequently broadcast media report, a police investigator revealed that, at the time of his death, Arkell was "...facing charges which had not gone to court..."^[8]

Valera told police that he had killed Arkell because he was a "very, very horrible man". At his trial Valera attempted to run a homosexual advance defence, giving evidence that Arkell had seduced him and that they had been in a sexual relationship for more than a year. Valera claimed to have lost control when Arkell wanted him to be the active partner for the first time. Valera also testified that he had been a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of his own father, Jack Van Krevel, from the age of seven. In convicting Valera of murder the jury had rejected the homosexual advance defence. In sentencing Valera to two terms of life imprisonment, Justice Studdert rejected Valera's evidence that he had been sexually abused by his father or that Arkell had asked him to engage in sexual activity and that this prompted a loss of self control.^[9]

Notes