Child rapist Ashley Griffith’s evil act after redundancy notice

The nation’s worst pedophile, Ashley Paul Griffith, singled out and raped a girl at a Uniting Church daycare centre in Brisbane in the weeks after he was told he was being made redundant.

Clockwise from left: Pedophile Ashley Paul Griffith, Reverend Heather den Houting and childcare operations manager Yolanda Borucki.

The nation’s worst pedophile, Ashley Paul Griffith, singled out and raped a little girl at a Uniting Church daycare centre in Brisbane in the weeks after he was told he was being made redundant and four months after a complaint about him “kissing” a girl at the same centre was dismissed, court records indicate.

His devastating abuse of the girl, a new victim he is not known to have previously assaulted, on his way out of the daycare centre can be revealed as calls grow for an independent and public inquiry into how he was able to abuse children for almost two full decades.

On Monday, March 14, 2022, the church’s early learning operations manager Yolanda Borucki informed Griffith his position had been made redundant, according to a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Nine days later, on March 23, 2022, Griffith submitted a letter of resignation from the centre, and on March 31 he emailed families announcing he had resigned.

In this same period, he struck a new victim.

Among the hundreds of shocking charges Griffith pleaded guilty to in Brisbane’s District Court last week, five related to the rape, abuse and recording of a girl between March 23 and April 1, 2022. The charges are listed as occurring in the same suburb as the Uniting Church childcare centre.

He then went on to abuse at least three more girls at other Brisbane daycare centres before his arrest in an unrelated investigation, according to the charges he pleaded guilty to.

It can also be revealed one of the most senior leaders of the Uniting Church in Queensland took just 43 minutes to approve Griffith’s redundancy, after he was earlier cleared of kissing a sleeping girl at the same centre.

Reverend Heather den Houting was then the general secretary of the church and had been involved in managing a report from a co-worker that Griffith was seen on top of a little girl during nap time and that his “mouth was moving along her mouth” in October 2021. Both police and an internal church investigation found he had no case to answer in November 2021.

Leaked documents sighted by The Australian show that five months after the disturbing incident, Reverend den Houting gave the green light to terminate Griffith’s position with a two-word response: “Go ahead.”

The Uniting Church cited a decline in enrolments when it gave Griffith a redundancy, the documents show.

The Queensland government is allowing police to investigate their dismissal of the complaint and a subsequent one from a three-year-girl at another Brisbane childcare centre, who according to her mother said Griffith “touched my privates”.

The second complaint was made in April 2022 but police decided there was insufficient evidence of an offence after the girl was asked to point on a teddy bear to where she had been touched and became confused, her mother said.

Premier Steven Miles said on Monday that “if there is any way we can avoid any Queensland child experiencing abuse like this again, then we will do it”.

He added: “I think any parent, indeed any Queenslander, has been shocked by what happened here. It should never have happened. The Police Commissioner is having another review of this case to see if there is anything that can or should have been done ­differently.”

University of South Australia adjunct research professor Chris Goddard, an expert on child safety, said on Monday it was “essential” to have an independent and public inquiry.

“There is no system that needs transparency more than child protection. It sends a message to victims that nothing will be covered up,” Dr Goddard said. “How many other offences are there that we don’t yet know about?”

Stressing he was an admirer of Queensland’s Task Force Argos online child exploitation unit, he said there were still important questions for state and federal police to answer about whether Griffith could have been stopped earlier.

Child abuse images and videos that were used to identify Griffith had been recovered by Argos eight years earlier, in 2014, in an investigation into a child abuse forum known as The Love Zone on the dark web.

The abuse material had been uploaded to an Interpol child sexual exploitation database, with no result until the Australian Federal Police victim identification officers reviewed the images and ­videos.

“The inquiry needs to go back the full 20 years or however many years he’s been out there,” Dr Goddard said.

Griffith abused at least 91 girls in daycare centres in Queensland, NSW and Italy, police say. He last week pleaded guilty in Brisbane’s District Court to 307 charges committed between 2004 until his ­arrest in August 2022.

Prior to Griffith being made redundant from the Uniting Church daycare centre in Brisbane, a 26-year-old educator said she came across him on all fours and leaning over a sleeping girl in an outdoor fort during nap time on Friday, October 8, 2021.

She immediately told another colleague and then reported Griffith – her boss and the centre’s director – by phone and in an email to a manager the same day. She wrote that she was shocked by what she saw and that her first instinct was to try to “save the child”.

Griffith responded angrily when she disturbed him, she said.

Her initial email also raised the red flag that Griffith had been regularly isolating children during rest time by dividing the cohort into groups and taking some to the outdoor fort where he was the sole supervisor.

Police dismissed the complaint, saying it did not amount to “actual physical contact” as the witness had told them Griffith’s face was 2cm from the girl’s face.

It can now be revealed that in a letter dated November 19, 2021, and marked “strictly private and confidential”, the church’s operations manager, Ms Borucki, advised the witness that her allegations had been dismissed.

Two internal investigators, human resources officer Jennifer Devantier and policy and compliance officer Kaitlyn McGinley, had been appointed by the Queensland Synod to investigate, the letter said.

“In relation to your complaint raised, on a balance of probabilities, the allegation that whilst a child was sleeping that Mr Griffith moved his mouth against a child’s mouth was not substantiated,” it added.

“Further, the allegation that Mr Griffith spoke to you angrily when you returned to the fort at approximately 1.13pm was not substantiated.”

The internal investigation “has now been finalised and we are confident the matter has been appropriately and thoroughly investigated”, the letter said.

“I would also like to remind you of the confidential nature of this matter and it is important that you do not discuss this (with) any other employee, volunteer, parent, guardian child associated with (the childcare centre) or member of the (name redacted) Uniting Church. Failure to do so may result in disciplinary action,” it added.

The email does not address the witness’s warning to the church that Griffith was regularly separating children and spending time alone with them.

Just under four months later, at 4.51pm on Tuesday March 8, 2022, the church’s executive director of people, culture and learning, Grant Weaver, wrote to Reverend den Houting with a termination request.

He wanted to make Griffith’s joint role of early childcare teacher and director of the Brisbane daycare centre redundant. Both Mr Weaver and Reverend den Houting had previously been involved in managing the complaint against Griffith.

“(The Brisbane childcare centre) has been experiencing a decline in enrollments and a recent campaign to increase enrollments has only resulted in one enrolment,” he wrote.

“Feedback identifies the current ECT/Director as being the reason for not proceeding with the enrollment. Please let me know if you approve or reject the termination request.”

Mr Weaver does not go into why Griffith was blamed for an ­enrolment not going ahead.

At 5.34pm on the same day, Reverend den Houting sent her reply to “go ahead”.

At 5.36pm Mr Weaver emailed Ms Borucki and Ms Devantier, the human resources officer who jointly conducted the previous investigation into Griffith and cleared him of wrongdoing. “Hi Jen and Yolanda, Heather has ­approved the redundancy,” he wrote.

Uniting Church managers were told by their internal insurance expert that they were not to admit any liability as police investigated Griffith, The Australian revealed on Monday.

Contact David Murray on [e-mail]