News Mania Desk / Piyal Chatterjee / 29th November 2024
For raping and sexually assaulting nearly 70 girls, a former daycare worker known as “one of Australia’s worst paedophiles” was given a life term. Between 2003 and 2022, Ashley Paul Griffith, 47, admitted committing 307 offenses at daycare facilities in Queensland, Australia, and abroad. His victims ranged in age from one to seven. Judge Paul Smith said that “there was a significant breach of trust” and described the scope and character of the crimes as “depraved” and “horrendous.” Griffith is also charged with allegedly abusing around two dozen minors in Italy and the Australian state of New South Wales.
Judge Smith ruled Friday in the Brisbane District Court that Griffith, who the court heard had a “paedophilic disorder,” had a high risk of reoffending and that he should be barred from parole for at least 27 years. The Australian Federal Police initially detained Griffith in August 2022, and he was charged with over 1,600 child sex offenses a year later. Eventually, the most of these were dropped. Thousands of photos and videos of his abuse that he had recorded and posted to the dark web were discovered by investigators. A distinctive pair of bedsheets that appeared in the background of some of the videos—which had been marketed to childcare facilities throughout Queensland—helped them identify Griffith even if faces were chopped out of the film.
He entered a guilty plea to over 200 charges of indecent treatment of a minor, 28 counts of rape, and multiple counts of creating and disseminating information linked to child exploitation. Four of the girls from a daycare center in Pisa, Italy, appeared in his videos. His other sixty-five victims came from eleven different places in Brisbane. Some of those victims and their parents, who are not allowed to be named for legal reasons, gave the court a series of tearful remarks prior to his punishment being handed down.
Among them were two sisters who were abused in kindergarten, one of whom recalled Griffith being her favourite teacher. “To find out what he was really doing was devastating… I don’t seem to be able to process it even now, because there’s a disconnect between what I remember and the reality,” she said, according to The Courier Mail.
Another woman told how his actions had robbed her of a normal childhood, recounting her struggles with mental illness in the years since. “I will never know what my life could have been like,” she is quoted as saying. “I can never know what it would have been to grow up unafraid of people.”
Parents meanwhile told the court of their horror upon discovering the crimes inflicted upon their children, with several saying they struggled to forgive themselves for trusting Griffith.
“(My daughter) loved you like an uncle and you used her like a toy,” one said, according to News Corp Australia. Another explained how she was trying to keep the burden of knowledge of the abuse from her daughter. “I cannot undo what you did to her body but will do everything I can to limit the damage to her mind,” she said, according to the Courier Mail.
Outside court, the families called for an investigation into the childcare centres – and broader system – in which Griffith was able to go undetected for so long. “Parents are walking their children into these centres today with a false sense of security,” one father told reporters.
