Ashley Griffith scandal: How authorities missed Australia’s worst predator – and charged a whistleblower
Leaked documents reveal an educator’s alarm at discovering daycare pedophile Ashley Griffith appearing to be kissing a sleeping girl 10 months before his arrest as the nation’s worst child sex predator.
On a Friday afternoon in October, 2021, a staff member at a Uniting Church childcare centre and kindergarten in Brisbane walked into an outdoor area and stumbled across a chilling scene.
It was the tail end of nap time, and the woman’s boss, Ashley Paul Griffith, was leaning over a young girl in a wooden fort, his head moving as if kissing her.
“I stopped to look into the bottom of the fort when I saw Ashley on his hands and knees bent over a girl who was sleeping on her back,” the woman wrote in an email to a manager just hours later. “His face was up against hers and his mouth was moving along her mouth.”
As the first known written account of what she saw, the email is important evidence.
It and other leaked documents sighted by The Weekend Australian and never before made public make it clear the 26-year-old educator who witnessed the fort incident was seriously concerned.
“I quickly walked inside, shocked by what just happened. I spoke with (a female staff member) explaining what I had seen. My thoughts at this point were to go back out and save the child,” she wrote in the email.
The events were officially reported to childcare regulators that night and to police the next day. But despite her fears about what she’d witnessed, there appears to have been no urgency from officers who took the complaint.
It was a month before Griffith was interviewed by police, and there is no evidence his electronic devices or home were searched.
On the advice of a child protection unit, the incident was written up as a suspected child harm incident because it didn’t involve any contact. After Griffith was interviewed, a decision was made to not take any further action. Queensland police say there was not enough evidence to substantiate an offence.
If more had been done, Griffith’s digital library of more than 4000 images of child abuse, meticulously chronicling his rape and sexual abuse of girls over decades, could have been exposed at that time rather than many months later.
He would have been stopped in his tracks.
Instead, he was cleared and within six months was moved on with a redundancy, and continued working with children in other Brisbane childcare centres, the leaked documents show.
Over the next 10 months, before his arrest as a result of an unrelated investigation, Griffith raped at least one more little girl and sexually abused three others, an analysis of court records reveals. Those parents, and others before them, would now rightly be demanding answers on how their children were left exposed to a monster.
It wasn’t the only missed opportunity. Six months after the fort incident, Queensland police dismissed a complaint from another girl, whose mother reported her as saying that Griffith “touched my privates”.
Griffith, 46, this week pleaded guilty in Brisbane’s District Court to 307 child sex abuse offences.
He had preyed on children for almost two full decades, his evil spree only ending when he was taken into custody in August 2022.
As the charges were read aloud, parents seated throughout the packed courtroom burst into tears and began sobbing upon hearing their child’s name in the roll call of victims.
It took 2½ hours to get through all the offences, yet there is no sign of any public inquiry into the worst case of abuse in childcare centres Australia has ever seen.
Griffith was working at a Gold Coast childcare centre when he was finally arrested. Federal police victim identification experts had traced bedsheets in abuse footage shared on the dark web to a centre he previously worked at, which then led to him.
He was initially charged with abusing two little girls at a childcare centre in Brisbane’s southwest, but a search of his cameras and phones and other devices yielded the thousands of abuse images.
A year later, in August 2023, federal and state police jointly announced a childcare worker, Griffith, was accused of raping and sexually assaulting 91 girls at 10 childcare centres in Brisbane, one in NSW and one overseas from 2007 to 2022.
The charges he pleaded guilty to this week go back further, with one against a Brisbane girl on a date unknown in 2003 or 2004.
Suspected contact
Since Griffith’s arrest was made public, Queensland police have said the complaint about the fort incident in October 2021 “did not involve physical contact”.
A Queensland Police Service statement issued to media outlets Wednesday repeated this assertion: “The allegations circulating publicly about the 2021 complaint made to the QPS that a child was kissed are incorrect. The complaint did not relate to physical contact with a child.”
But the documents sighted by The Weekend Australian show the educator who witnessed the fort incident feared Griffith was kissing the girl, and that it was a case of suspected physical contact.
Her initial email to a Uniting Church area manager was sent at 7.12pm that day.
“Thank you for talking to me today. Below are the details of the event that occurred,” she began matter-of-factly.
“12.44pm – I had finished my lunch break, it was rest time, I then helped (another staff member) clean the classroom.
“1pm – The other children inside started waking up. I opened up the blinds and the bathroom door then continued completing tasks around the room.”
She witnessed the fort incident at 1.10pm and after conferring with her other co-worker approached Griffith three minutes later. Griffith, the centre’s director, was in the same position over the girl.
“1.13pm – I walked outside and called Ashley’s name three times, as he was still facing the child. He turned around still on all fours and quite angrily asked: `what?’
“I asked if he wanted to go on a break or go into the office and he said `no, it’s okay’.
“I then walked back inside. When I got inside I did keep a sharp lookout. However, it wasn’t long until he came inside to go on his break.”
At the bottom of the email, the woman revealed Griffith was routinely spending time alone with sleeping children after separating them into groups in different areas of the centre. It had the effect of separating supervisors and in the circumstances was another major red flag.
“Backstory: At rest time around 12:30- 1:00pm, Ashley usually takes some children outside (lately it has been most days) to rest at the wooden fort either on the top or the bottom,” she wrote.
“I tend to go on my lunch break inside when he goes outside and the other staff member stays inside with me to supervise the other children.”
‘On all fours’
Leaked QPS logs sighted by The Weekend Australian state that officers spoke to the witness the next day.
“Known suspect Ashley Paul Griffith was on all fours with his knees and hands on the ground on top of a female child. Known suspect Griffith’s face was 2cm away from the girls (sic) face and was moving in a side to side motion,” the logs state … Griffith was in this position for 3 minutes. Known suspect was confronted by witness … and responded `what’. Known suspect then sat up.”
The logs added that the woman “was shocked by this as she saw that Griffith face (sic) was super close to the girl’s face … She stated that his mouth was close to the girl’s mouth. She stated she then walked back into the classroom and paced around until she spoke to her co-worker.”
“When I first came it did look like he was kissing her. But when I … I didn’t actually see any contact. But I don’t know. He was kind of like pecking his lips and his head was kind of moving.”
There was no CCTV of the incident, and the other children had their eyes closed and were further away when Griffith was on all fours.
A Uniting Church area manager told police that Griffith would be stood down pending an investigation. As a result “there is no known continued immediate risk of harm to the child”, the logs state.
“On advice from CPIU (Child Protection and Investigation Unit) this matter was to be reported as a Child Harm occurrence as the informant (sic) obtained from witness … do not amount to actual physical contact. “The NOK (next of kin) is at this time not aware of this incident. Please forward matter to Gateway CPIU for continued investigation.”
There is no indication that the witness was asked about her earlier email to a manager, in which she stated that Griffith’s “mouth was moving along her mouth”.
That email could be taken to suggest there was actual physical contact, between Griffith’s mouth and the girl’s.
An update to the police logs stated that the woman met specialist child protection officers at Boondall police station almost a month later, on November 6, 2021.
“The witness said it looked like he might of (sic) been kissing the child but the witness couldn’t really see and didn’t observe any direct contact,” the update states.
“The witness stated that she didn’t observe Ashley touching the (girl) who was asleep at the time but stated that it felt wrong and she felt she needed to report it. The witness appeared visibly upset by the situation and has been offered a referral.”
Kissing the girl
A source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that in her recorded interview with police that day, the woman specifically stated that her initial impression was that Griffith was kissing the girl.
“When I first came it did look like he was kissing her. But when I … I didn’t actually see any contact. But I don’t know. He was kind of like pecking his lips and his head was kind of moving,” she said.
Two days later, on November 8, Griffith attended Boondall police station and took part in an electronically recorded interview, denying wrongdoing.
“Griffith stated that his lips were never touching the child’s lips. Griffith stated that he was trying to gently wake the sleeping child up and lent down beside her,” the police logs state. “Griffith stated that the child then grabbed him around the neck and let go. Griffith stated that at no time was he inappropriate with the child.”
The education department and the child’s mother were informed. Police investigations were over.
“No further police action to be taken at this point. No criminal offences have been identified,” the logs state.
Six months after the fort incident, in April 2022, Queensland police spoke to a three-year-old girl from a separate Brisbane childcare centre.
Speaking to A Current Affair last year, the girl’s mother said her heart sank when her daughter told her at bedtime: “Ashley touched my privates.” “I said ‘who is Ashley?’ and she said ‘the man teacher’ or ‘the boy teacher’,” she said.
But in the police interview, apparently conducted without a parent or support person in the room, the girl became confused when she was asked to use a teddy bear to show where she had been touched, her mum said.
“The detective did say to me afterwards, ‘I’ve been doing this for a really long time, I deal with a lot of children who have been interfered with and your daughter doesn’t seem like a child who has been interfered with’,” she said.
Two more girls were sexually assaulted after that incident, court records indicate.
The woman’s daughter is not one of the 91 girls Griffith has been accused of abusing.
It seems she was not recorded by Griffith, raising the question: How many children did he abuse off-camera that have not been identified as victims?
While both complaints to police were dismissed, Queensland detectives did pursue someone – a former Uniting Church manager who spoke out after Griffith’s arrest about her serious concerns that there were systemic failures that allowed him to rape and abuse children.
’Crucial info’
Yolanda Borucki was the church’s manager of early learning operations at the time of the fort incident and was involved in handling the complaint.
The documents sighted by The Weekend Australian show Ms Borucki was forwarded the initial email from the eyewitness to the fort incident at 7.52pm the day it happened. At 8.09pm she forwarded it to four other senior managers, adding in the subject line: “Crucial info.”
After Griffith was charged, Ms Borucki, a grandmother now aged 60, appeared on A Current Affair and revealed the fort incident.
It was the first time details of the incident were made public, and it was potentially damaging for Queensland police and the Uniting Church. They had a complaint against Griffith 10 months before his arrest, but had dismissed it.
Ms Borucki told the program she wanted Griffith out of the centre, but human resources were concerned he would go to Fair Work Australia and contest a dismissal. She was herself made redundant the day before police announced Griffith’s arrest.
“The system failed them,” she said of the children abused by Griffith. “As a very first step I don’t believe any educator should be left with children by themselves.”
On August 15, 2023, 11 days after the interview aired, four detectives from Task Force Argos, Queensland’s renowned online child exploitation unit, arrived at Ms Borucki’s home in the bayside Brisbane suburb of Wellington Point with a warrant.
The Uniting Church had alleged Ms Borucki used a restricted computer to access confidential information, and then unlawfully provided material to the TV network including identifying information about a child victim.
It was a particularly sensitive case for Australian law enforcement.
The images and videos of the abuse of two girls that eventually led to Griffith’s arrest were first discovered by Argos in 2014.
At the time, the specialist squad was involved in a major investigation into a forum on the dark web that was dedicated to child abuse called The Love Zone, run by a now-notorious South Australian childcare worker and pedophile Shannon McCoole.
Ghosts for years
Argos and its national and international counterparts have had incredible success in rescuing children and identifying offenders, but on this occasion the two little girls and their abuser remained ghosts for years.
Federal police and other agencies joined an international search for the victims, with no result.
Eight years later, federal agents revisiting the images and videos traced the bedsheets to a Brisbane childcare centre and Griffith in August 2022.
Queensland police were not able to search Griffith’s home or devices after suspicions were twice raised that he was abusing children in his care in childcare centres.
But they were swift in getting a magistrate to approve a search of Ms Borucki’s home, charging her the same day with the offence of computer hacking.
The warrant’s broad terms allowed police to take her phone and all devices capable of connecting to the internet. She was also compelled to give police access to everything on the devices.
“The system failed them. As a very first step I don’t believe any educator should be left with children by themselves.” – Yolanda Borucki
A hearing on the charge will be held in Brisbane Magistrates Court in November.
Her Blue Card to work with children is understood to have been suspended.
Before his arrest, police and regulators did not refer either of the two serious complaints about Griffith to state authorities managing the Blue Card system as he had not been charged. An internal police review found both complaints against Griffith were appropriately investigated and that the allegations could not be substantiated at the time.
Police Minister Mark Ryan this week requested a new internal investigation into the handling of the complaints.
Bravehearts child protection group founder Hetty Johnston said it was not enough and called for a commission of inquiry into how Griffith was able to abuse girls in childcare centres for so long.
“We had multiple disclosures and it all went off the radar,” she said. “Sexual predators are very difficult to catch. To have one clear-cut incident that you can convict them on is most unusual. But what is common is that there is a trail, so it’s really important that our systems capture that. And in this case it didn’t happen.”
Ms Johnston said she believed more weight needed to be given to protecting children, and that police should have been able to search Griffith’s phone at the time of the first complaint.
A QPS spokeswoman declined to comment on Ms Borucki’s case while it was before court.
Griffith is awaiting sentencing.
Contact David Murray on murrayd@theaustralian.com.au
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