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 offenses committed at childcare centers in the Australian state of Queensland and overseas between 2003 and 2022. His victims were aged between one and seven. Judge Paul Smith called the scale and nature of the crimes "depraved" and "horrendous", saying "there was a significant breach of trust". In addition to this case, the BBC understands Griffith is separately accused of abusing more than two dozen children in the Australian state of New South Wales and in Italy. In the Brisbane District Court on Friday, Judge Smith said Griffith — who the court heard had a "paedophilic disorder" — had a high risk of reoffending, ordering a non-parole period of at least 27 years. Griffith was first arrested in August 2022 by the Australian Federal Police, and a year later charged with more than 1,600 child sex offences. Most of these were eventually dropped. Investigators found thousands of photographs and videos of his abuse, which he had filmed and uploaded onto the dark web. Although faces were cropped out of the footage, they managed to trace them to Griffith because of a unique set of bedsheets seen in the background of some of the videos, which had been sold to childcare centres across Queensland. He pleaded guilty to 28 counts of rape, almost 200 charges relating to indecent treatment of a child, and several related to making and sharing child exploitation material. Four of the girls who featured in his videos were from a childcare centre in Pisa, Italy. His other 65 victims were from 11 locations across Brisbane. Ahead of his sentence behind handed down, the court heard a string of emotional statements from some of those victims and their parents — who cannot be identified for legal reasons. 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, in an article by The Guardian Australia. "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. — BBC
