How Australia’s worst pedophile, Ashley Paul Griffith, exploited a broken system

Daycare predator Ashley Paul Griffith dodged scrutiny for almost two decades despite multiple reports from co-workers and his little victims that should have uncovered his depraved behaviour.

The arrest of Gold Coast Childcare worker Ashley Paul Griffith for rape and sexual assaults. Picture: AFP

Shocking failures to prevent and detect the sexual abuse of children in daycare centres have been revealed in court as the nation’s worst pedophile, Ashley Paul Griffith, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Griffith was able to abuse children at will as he repeatedly moved from one childcare centre to the next, despite concerns about his conduct and repeated workplace problems dating back two decades. He was free to regularly isolate girls and to brazenly abuse them while recording with multiple cameras including one set up on a tripod, the court was told.

Sentencing remarks in Brisbane’s District Court on Friday painted a picture of an abject failure of child protection measures and a litany of missed opportunities to stop Griffith.

No little girl was safe from the predator, who abused his victims when they were awake or asleep or in front of other children.

Most of his victims were aged between three and five, but the youngest may have been just one.

Ashley Paul Griffith.

Griffith told police he had a sexual interest in older girls too but targeted those he thought were easier prey.

Federal police began contacting families following Griffith’s arrest in late 2022, asking them to identify their children by their clothing and faces from recordings of rapes and abuse.

Heart-wrenching victim impact statements from parents brought home the immense damage inflicted since. As devastated parents worry about the potential long-term impacts, some are tormented over whether to tell their daughters about the abuse when they appear to have no recollection of it.

Griffith, 46, will have to serve at least 27 years’ jail before becoming eligible for parole. Prosecutors asked for a minimum of at least 30 years, but Judge Paul Smith took into account Griffith’s guilty pleas and assistance he offered police.

The 307 offences Griffith was convicted of include 43 counts that each carry a maximum life sentence: 15 of “maintaining a sexual relationship with a child” and 28 of rape.

The total number of charges do not tell the true story of the extent and severity of his offending, as many separate offences are rolled into each one of the “maintaining a relationship” charges.

Taking into account two years already served, his earliest release date will be in 2049, aged 71.

There were 65 victims in Queensland and four in Italy, some abused over many months.

Griffith now faces extradition to NSW to face justice for allegedly abusing dozens more girls at a single childcare centre in Sydney.

“This is a case of such seriousness and gravity as to warrant a maximum penalty,” Judge Smith said on Friday.

The origins of the case go back to one of the nation’s most audacious criminal investigations: A 2014 operation in which Queensland detectives took over and ran a child abuse site called The Love Zone on the dark web.

The bold move led to offenders around the world being identified, before the site was shut down. Among them was “Britain’s worst pedophile”, Richard Huckle, who was given 22 life sentences for abusing children from impoverished families in Malaysia and Cambodia over nine years.

But for eight years, no one in Australian law enforcement could find a former member of The Love Zone with the username Zimble, who in 2013 and 2014 had uploaded 10 videos and 46 images depicting himself abusing six little girls in child care.

It was someone very close to home for Queensland investigators, Griffith, and the worst-case scenario unfolded – while he remained at large, he continued to abuse girls in his care.

Federal and Queensland police jointly launched Operation Tenterfield in 2014 to try to identify Zimble and the girls in the footage, the court was told.

It stalled several times before, in 2022, federal investigators had a breakthrough, identifying the company that sold a type of blanket seen in the abuse footage.

Further police inquiries found the company sold blankets to southeast Queensland childcare centres, then employment records identified Griffith as the offender.

By finding Griffith, the detectives had stopped an active offender who could have gone on to abuse countless more girls, demonstrating the vital role of the precious few investigators working in victim identification.

“You’re looking for a needle in a haystack. They did the best they could based on the information they had at the time,” one victim’s mother told The Weekend Australian. Her focus is on holding childcare centres and the system that monitors them to account for why Griffith’s red flags never stopped him abusing children.

“What enabled him to get away with it for so long and where were the failings? We know the Blue Card system does jack shit. Unless he was convicted, nothing was going to show up,” she said.

When officers knocked on the door of the Gold Coast home Griffith shared with his mother, his web of deceit of nearly two decades quickly began to unravel.

Computers, hard drives and SD cards gathered at the Elanora address and a second property at Beechmont contained 571 videos and 18,257 images of children he had collected over the years.

The images of his own vile abuse of children was categorised in folders labelled with the child’s name and the sex act.

A courtroom sketch of Ashley Paul Griffith. Sketch: Brett Lethbridge

Griffith abused his first known victim at a Brisbane daycare centre in 2003 or 2004.

“He left this daycare as he was fired due to performance issues,” Judge Smith said. This was a pattern that continued throughout his working life. After an initial career in Queensland from 2003, he briefly went to Italy in 2014 then moved to NSW the same year.

After returning to Brisbane in 2018, he worked at one centre for just four weeks before leaving as “he and the owner did not see eye-to-eye”, Judge Smith said. The next month, September 2018, he was terminated from another daycare within 25 days for unspecified “performance issues”.

Griffith was employed at a Uniting Church daycare centre as an educator and director between December 2019 and April 2022.

During that time, an anonymous online post made an allegation that the centre was involved in a pedophile ring. He assured parents in a letter in response that their children were in safe hands and that staff underwent police and criminal history checks.

Griffith raped 10 of his 11 victims there. It was the same centre where he was reported to have been seen allegedly “kissing” a child in an outdoor fort by a colleague – a claim dismissed by the centre and Queensland police.

His shifts at a centre where he sexually touched one girl were cancelled in April 2022 after a child alleged Griffith “touched a vaginal area during rest time”.

Police decided the disclosure did not meet the threshold for a criminal investigation.

Premier David Crisafulli has said he will launch an independent inquiry led by Queensland Family and Child Commissioner Luke Twyford into systemic failings to keep children safe.