Mother breaks silence over alleged childcare “kissing” incident
The mother of a little girl who was allegedly ‘kissed’ by Australia’s worst pedophile while in his care has expressed her disappointment at being kept ‘in the dark for three years’.
The mother of a little girl who was allegedly “kissed” by Australia’s worst pedophile while in his care has expressed her disappointment at being kept “in the dark for three years” by the Brisbane child care centre where the incident is said to have taken place.
Speaking out for the first time, the woman – who cannot be identified for legal reasons – told Brisbane Magistrates Court she was never given the findings of an internal report conducted by the centre operator, the Uniting Church, into the October 2021 incident.
A co-worker is alleged to have seen childcare worker Ashley Paul Griffith leaning over a child sleeping in an outdoor fort and appeared to be kissing her. Another worker complained to the church and Queensland Police, and both ultimately dismissed the matter.
In September, Griffith pleaded guilty to 307 unrelated charges of child abuse, including rape and making child exploitation material.
“We always thought that the children slept inside the childcare centre,” the woman said.
“We had no idea for three years that children were allowed to sleep outside. Me and my husband, we couldn’t quite believe that someone was kissing a child because it was an open area and there was workers. So how can someone do that?”
The mother gave evidence against the church’s early learning operations manager, Yolanda Borucki, who pleaded not guilty on Monday to one count of computer hacking for leaking confidential details – including the report and the details of children and their families – to a journalist.
The woman said she was contacted by Ms Borucki within 48 hours after the October 8 incident, while still in hospital after giving birth to her fourth child.
“She informed me that there had been an incident involving my daughter with one of the workers,” the mother said. “She then went on to tell me that this worker had been caught kissing my daughter, and that this person has been stood down for an investigation.”
Ms Borucki told the woman she could not provide details as investigations were ongoing, and later refused to provide the Uniting Church’s final report citing privacy reasons.
The mother said the next time she saw Ms Borucki was on August 4, 2023, on A Current Affair, four days after Australian Federal Police announced they had arrested Griffith but did not name him. “My world just got ripped apart again,” the woman said.
Barrister Patrick McCafferty KC, who was acting for Ms Borucki, asked the woman whether she was “disappointed” that no one from the church had given her a copy of the report.
“We’ve been kept in the dark for three years on everything,” she said. “We’re being told to not talk about it (by the AFP), and we’ve done that. Being a parent, you don’t know any information … but everyone else knows more information than you do.”
The woman was instructed by a Human Resources representative at the Uniting Church that she would be required to pay child care fees while Griffith was stood down pending investigation.
On August 3, 2023, Ms Borucki is alleged to have sent 17 emails containing private and confidential information belonging to the Uniting Church from her work email address to her own personal iCloud account and a journalist at A Current Affair. Two emails were sent to the journalist’s work account and duplicates to his personal email, each containing 20 and 33 attachments, and included information about the investigation and details about children and their parents.
Ms Borucki sent the documents three days after being told she had been made redundant from her role. She was issued a show cause notice on August 4 for sending the document in violation of the organisation’s privacy policy and her employment was terminated on August 10.
Mr McCafferty objected to the relevance of most of the evidence put forward by police prosecutor Bimal Rout.
The hearing will continue on Tuesday.
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