A former childcare worker dubbed ‘one of Australia’s worst pedophiles’ has been sentenced to life in prison for raping and sexually abusing almost 70 girls.
Ashley Paul Griffith, 47, confessed to 307 crimes committed in daycare centers in the Australian state of Queensland and Italy between 2003 and 2022. His victims were aged between one and seven.
Judge Paul Smith described the scale and nature of the crimes as “depraved” and “appalling” and said: “There was a significant breach of trust.”
Griffith is separately accused of abusing an unknown number of children in the state of New South Wales.
Judge Smith said in the Brisbane District Court on Friday that Griffith – who the court heard had a ‘paedophilic disorder’ – was at high risk of reoffending. He ordered a non-parole period of at least 27 years.
Griffith was first arrested by Australian Federal Police in August 2022 and charged with more than 1,600 child sex offenses a year later. Most of these 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 had filmed and uploaded to the dark web.
Although the faces were cropped out of the footage, they managed to trace it back to Griffith thanks to a unique set of sheets seen in the background of the videos, which had been sold to daycare centers in Queensland.
He pleaded guilty to 28 charges of rape, almost 200 charges relating to the indecent treatment of a child, and several relating to making and sharing child exploitation material.
Four of the victims were in his care at a daycare center in Pisa, Italy, while the other 65 came from 11 locations in Brisbane, Australia.
Before sentencing, the court heard a series of emotional statements from Griffith’s victims and their parents.
Among them were two sisters who were abused in kindergarten, one of whom remembered that Griffith was her favorite teacher.
“Finding out what he was really doing was devastating and brought conflicting emotions to say the least,” she said, according to The Courier Mail.
“I can’t seem to process it even now because there’s a gap between what I remember and reality.”
Another victim told how his actions robbed her of a normal childhood, and opened up about her struggles with mental illness in the years that followed.
“I will never know what my life could have been like,” she said in a Guardian Australia report.
“I can never know what it would have been like to grow up without fear of people.”
Parents, meanwhile, told the court of their horror at discovering the crimes committed against their children, with several saying they struggled to forgive themselves because they trusted Griffith.
“(My daughter) loved you like an uncle and you used her like a toy,” one person said, according to News Corp Australia.
Another explained how she tried to keep the burden of knowing about the abuse from her daughter.
“I cannot undo what you did to her body, but I will do everything I can to limit the damage to her mind,” she said, according to the Courier Mail.
