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A former childcare worker in Australia has pleaded guilty to 307 sex offences committed over a period of 20 years.
Ashley Paul Griffith, 46, pleaded guilty on Monday to charges related to the abuse of children in his care. The charges included 28 counts of rape, 190 of indecent treatment, and 67 of creating child exploitation material.
The crimes were committed against 60 children, many of them under 12, at childcare centres in Australia and Italy between 2003 and 2022.
Griffith was arrested in August 2022 after investigators linked him to disturbing content found on the dark web. He was charged with more than 1,400 crimes, including multiple counts of rape, after additional child abuse material was found on his electronic devices.
The number of charges was significantly reduced earlier this year and additional charges were dropped on Monday, leaving him facing 307 offences.
A parent of one of the victims recalled the “horrific” moment they were told their daughter had been sexually abused. They initially thought that police were contacting them about a separate incident at the daycare centre, but they were instead asked to identify their child from a photo.
“We see people going in and I think this happened to my child in that room,” the victim’s mother said, referring to the daycare centre. “It’s a room of horrors.”
Her father said it was “hard to believe” how someone could “get away with something like that for so long”.
“As she grows up, we’ll deal with that as it comes but it’s going to be something we deal with through our lives now,” the child’s father said. “It was good that he pleaded guilty and we can move on to the next step now.”
Michael Fitzgerald of the New South Wales state police last year described it as “one of the most horrific cases of alleged child abuse our detectives have seen”.
Australian police believe that Griffith, who held the necessary childcare qualifications, recorded all his alleged offences using phones and cameras while at work.
There were no official reports against him before his arrest, police said. However, a childcare manager, Yolanda Borucki, had reported Griffith to Queensland Police months earlier after a staff member saw him kissing a girl, according to 9News.
Ms Borucki, who managed a childcare chain where Griffith was employed, helped file a report to Queensland Police. Despite this complaint, police cleared Griffith without searching his home or devices, allowing him to continue working in childcare, where he allegedly abused more children, the report said.
“We didn’t keep quiet, we [have] been very clear something is wrong but no one [has] done anything about it,” Ms Borucki was quoted as saying.
Griffith will be sentenced at a later date. He did not seek bail and was returned to custody after arraignment.
Last week, an Australian man who pretended to be a teenage YouTube celebrity to prey on children and young adults online was sentenced to 17 years in jail.
Muhammad Zain Ul Abideen Rasheed, 29, from Perth had coerced 286 victims, including 180 children, from 20 countries into performing sexually explicit acts on camera or video, Australian police said.
Rasheed pleaded guilty to 119 charges last December and was first charged in 2021 when police reported that he had posed as a teenage social media celebrity to befriend girls in Australia and abroad.
If you are a child and you need help because something has happened to you, you can call the NSPCC free of charge on 0800 1111. You can also call the NSPCC if you are an adult and you are worried about a child, on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adults on 0808 801 0331.
