A former childcare worker dubbed “one of Australia’s worst children” has been jailed for life for raping and sexually abusing nearly 70 girls.
Ashley Paul Griffiths, 47, pleaded guilty to 307 offenses between 2003 and 2022 at child care centers in the Australian state of Queensland and Italy. His victims ranged in age from one to seven.
Judge Paul Smith described the scale and nature of the offenses as “deviant” and “appalling”, saying there had been “a significant breach of trust”.
Griffiths is accused of abusing an unknown number of children in a separate state of New South Wales.
In the Brisbane District Court on Friday, Judge Smith said Griffith – who the court heard had a “pedophilic disorder” – was at high risk of re-offending, imposing a minimum non-parole period of 27 years. Ordered.
Griffith was first arrested by the Australian Federal Police in August 2022, and a year later he was charged with more than 1,600 child sex offences. Most of them were eventually dropped.
Warning: This story contains details that readers may find disturbing.
Investigators found thousands of photos and videos of his abuse, which he filmed and uploaded to the dark web.
Although the faces were cropped from the footage, they were able to pass them on to Griffiths, who sell to Queensland childcare centers, thanks to a unique set of bed sheets seen in the background of the videos. were done.
He pleaded guilty to 28 counts of rape, indecent treatment of nearly 200 children, and multiple charges of creating and sharing child exploitation material.
Four of the victims were in her care at a childcare center in Pisa, Italy, while the other 65 were from 11 locations in Brisbane, Australia.
Before he was sentenced, the court heard emotional statements from Griffith’s victims and their parents.
Among them were two sisters who had been abused in kindergarten, one of whom recalled Griffith as her favorite teacher.
“To find out what he was really doing was devastating and caused conflicting emotions, to say the least,” she said, according to The Courier-Mail.
“I still can’t seem to process it, because there’s a disconnect between what I remember and reality.”
Another of his victims told how his actions robbed her of a normal childhood, recounting her struggles with mental illness in her later years.
“I will never know what my life could have been like,” she said in a Guardian Australia report.
“I’ll never know what it was like to grow up not being afraid of people.”
Parents, meanwhile, told the court of their horror at discovering the crimes committed against their children, with many 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 described how she was trying to shoulder the burden of knowledge of the abuse from her daughter.
“I can’t undo what you did to his body but I will do everything I can to limit the damage to his brain,” she said, according to the Courier-Mail.