Victim impact statement as Ashley Paul Griffith is sentenced

A mother of one of Ashley Griffith’s victims has read aloud a haunting victim impact statement saying he came to her daughter’s birthday party and did face painting for the children.

• Sentencing: State seeks life in jail

Haunting victim impact statements written by parents of little girls abused by childcare worker Ashley Griffith have been read aloud by Crown Prosecutor Stephanie Gallagher.

Parents, through their statements, have told of the moment they were visited by AFP officers and shown photographs of their children during efforts to identify his many victims.

A mother who read aloud her victim impact statement said Griffith had become a close friend during the time he taught her daughter.

She said their friendship began when she spotted him walking one day and offered to drive him home.

The woman said she thought he’d “shared similar values to mine” and during that car ride, they’d talked about the “difference a good teacher could (make) in the life of a student”.

She said he began spending time with her family, having dinners at her home, coming over for movie nights and playing sports with her older sons.

She said they went to markets and bookstores together and he came to her daughter’s birthday where he did face painting for the children.

Then, one day, she received a visit from the AFP and was told her daughter was one of Griffith’s victims.

Ashley Paul Griffith will be sentenced over a range of offences.

“Words cannot express the shock I felt … I thought it must have been a mistake. Ashley would never do this to us,” she said.

She said the abuse had a horrific affect on everyone in her family, with her son telling her he would never trust anyone again, that “we should never have trusted him - now look what’s happened”.

She said since the abuse has come to light, she has noticed changes in her “beautiful and thoughtful girl”.

She said her daughter has become overly concerned with risk taking and germs and has since been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety.

The mother said her little girl does not like school and she is terrified she will one day learn or remember what happened to her.

“How could I have let this happen? Why did I let him into our lives so easily? Why did I let him into our life?” she said.

“I have since been diagnosed with depression. I have lost what makes me human. I care less. I trust no-one - not even myself.”

Parents in the public gallery have cried and comforted each other as the many statements are read out.

Griffith has at times remained emotionless but put his hands over his face and cradled his head in his hands while several of his former students spoke of the trauma he inflicted on them.

Another mother asked for her statement to be read for her so her daughter “will never know her connection to this trial”.

But the woman included details about her interactions with Griffith so that he would know who she was, the damage he had done and the trust he had broken.

“The person I knew myself to be has died with the horror of your betrayal,” she said.

The woman described how she would walk for long distances in heavy rain so she could cry and howl without anybody knowing.

She said she burnt the sheets from her daughter’s cot and that she lives in fear that one day her little girl will discover the abuse Griffith inflicted on her.

She recounted an occasion when she took her daughter to the emergency department with a “laceration” to her vagina. She said a doctor explained the cut was from a fingernail. She said she was told by Griffith her daughter must have fallen onto something at childcare.

The woman said she must now live with the reality she was “blind” to her daughter’s torment.

“I cannot undo what you did to her body but will do everything I can to limit the damage to her mind,” she said.

Another parent said she learnt of the abuse just days before a major milestone in her daughters’ secondary education.

She said her daughters were the only two victims at their childcare centre.

“Why my daughters?” she asked.

“Were they too chatty? Too friendly?”

Crown Prosecutor Stephanie Gallagher leaving court. Picture: Steve Pohlner

She said she taught them about their bodies and how to be safe and watched them like a hawk at playgrounds and in public.

“It will be forever part of my life story, forever part of my girls’ life story,” she said.

The woman said one day, while bathing her little girls, she told them “no touching there” during what she described as “inappropriate touching”. She said she had educated her girls about safety and their bodies.

“One of my girls said ‘what if they ask?’,” she recounted.

“I said ‘nobody is allowed to ask you that’.”

She said her daughter was “so anxious” about the conversation.

Later, after the AFP had told her about the offending, she tried to talk to her daughters about their teacher.

“She tried to defend him when I asked her about it. This breaks my heart,” she said.

“I don’t speak to her about it. I don’t remind her. I won’t say his name in my house.”

She said she will have to find a way to explain to them what happened when they were old enough to fully understand.

She said she also has to wonder what he did to them that he did not record.

“This man is not safe for society. He never will be,” she said.

“People like him will never, ever be safe.”

Two sisters abused by Griffith also took the stands to detail the impacts on their lives.

“Ashley was my favourite teacher at kindy, and he is a key memory. When I think about my memories, to find out what he was really doing was devastating and brought on conflicting emotions, to say the least,” she recalled.

“I don’t seem to be able to process it even now, because there’s a disconnect between what I remember and the reality. I remember looking forward to kindy playing made up games, doing arts and crafts and getting to play on the Barbie website on Ashley’s computer, but the evidence paints a different picture.”

“I cannot even contemplate how this has happened to so many young girls. I wish I remembered something so Ashley could have been stopped over a decade earlier,” she said.

Her sister told of being utterly confused when she got a call from the AFP asking her to come in.

“I was just a little girl. A little girl who brought a different stuffed animal to childcare everyday,” she said.

“I had unlimited trust in Ashley.

“I had loved kindy…now there is a big shadow over it.

“That this horrible thing didn’t happen to just me but my sister as well, and so many other little girls too. How was this able to happen?

Court sketch of Ashley Paul Griffith.

“To know such cruelty has occurred to such innocent little girls, to know it had gone on for so long, it’s truly painful. I know what happened can’t be fixed. I’m still learning to understand it, but I hope by sharing my experience, I have helped in some way.”

Their father echoed the abuse gross of trust and betrayal felt by his victims.

“The revelation was a devastating shock…the very person who was supposed to protect our children violated them in the most horrifying way,” he said.

The sense of guilt among parents has been a common theme and serves to show how Griffith’s actions have destroyed hundreds of people to their core.

“It is essential that you and everyone who reads this or listens to this hear what I have to say next,” another mother whose daughter was abused.

“This man played to everyone’s weaknesses. He harnessed and grew relationships based on our empathy and compassion for others. He took our inner most qualities and personality traits and used them against us, leaving us questioning and, in my case, hating the person left in his wake.

“However, what I found at the core of all of this, what I call symptoms, is a deep seated hatred for the person who ever thought it was okay to trust this man with the care of my child - myself.”

She revealed Griffith wrote to he after he’d been asked to leave a childcare centre early.

“He commented on my ‘amazing family and my daughter’s joyful spirit and kind and loving heart’,” she said.

“To my retrospective disgust, I responded with thanks, stating, I know you’ve impacted my daughter’s early years profoundly, not knowing how detrimental this profound impact was.”

One father, who works in law enforcement, described the day his wife received a phone call from an AFP investigator requesting an urgent meeting.

He said the officer would not elaborate over the phone, saying only it related to their daughter and the childcare centre she had attended.

He said within an hour, two vehicles arrived at their home. One contained an AFP investigator and the other a Queensland Police Service detective inspector and the officer in charge of their local Child Protection Investigation Unit - a person he knew.

“I held my wife’s hand tight and knew what this meant. We were devastated even before the detective spoke,” he said.

The father said that because not all parents of Griffith’s victims had been told, they were asked not to speak about it to anyone.

He said they found this isolating, while acknowledging the compassion shown by the police investigating Griffith’s actions.

“We still do not know how the abuse will affect (our daughter) in years to come,” he told the court.

He said he and his wife are terrified another major traumatic event in their life distracted them while their daughter was being abused by her childcare teacher.

“Did we ignore our child when she needed us the most?” he said.

The father said since learning of their daughter’s rape, both he and his wife have suffered mental health issues but have had to carry on with work and life so their little girl doesn’t know something is wrong.

He said his wife had to take their daughter to a pediatric gynaecologist to have her checked for STIs.

“A memory popped up on social media recently of (our daughter) and her abuser. It was a kick in the guts,” he said.

“We hope she never remembers. We want justice. We want the courts to recognise the gravity of his offending.”