Parents’ pain raw as they demand answers over pedophile’s offending

Devastated parents have vented their anger at childcare centres where their little girls were repeatedly raped and assaulted by one of Australia’s worst pedophiles, Ashley Paul Griffith.

Sketch artist image of pedophile Ashley Paul Griffith in Brisbane Supreme Court. Picture: Brett Lethbridge

Devastated parents have vented their anger at childcare centres where their little girls were repeatedly raped and assaulted by one of Australia’s worst pedophiles, Ashley Paul Griffith, as the prosecutor seeks a life sentence.

The long-lasting impacts of the daycare worker’s vile acts were laid out in emotional victim impact statements heard in the Brisbane District Court from the families of some of the 91 girls ­Griffith’s abused over nearly two decades.

Three of his earliest victims, who are now adults, were heard for the first time.

Director of Public Prosecutions Todd Fuller has asked judge Paul Smith to jail Griffith for life after he pleaded guilty to 307 charges against 69 Queensland children.

The other child victims were in NSW and Italy. He will be sentenced on Friday.

Many parents, none of whom can be identified, said they still struggled to drive past the centres where the abuse took place years after their children attended.

One mother said she was “haunted” by of Griffith’s actions and wanted to see justice. “I vow to repair the damage and ensure that you and the Uniting Church are held accountable for the suffering that you have caused,” she said.

Ashley Paul Griffith.

A Queensland police officer was one of many who now endures nightmares after entrusting his daughter to Griffith’s care. “We … now carry the irrevocable pain and guilt of knowing we unintentionally took our child to be raped, sexually assaulted and filmed,” he said. “We must carry around the burden of knowing that we paid for this by our childcare fees.”

Another father said the centre where his child was abused had not once checked up on the little girl’s wellbeing.

Mr Fuller said the childcare worker’s actions were abhorrent and difficult to comprehend. “The true horror of the offending is hard to capture in words,” he said.

Griffith, 46, was arrested in Aug­ust 2022 after investigations that had spanned eight years and had repeatedly stalled, the court was told.

In 2014, Queensland’s Task Force Argos and the Australian Federal Police were jointly investigating a site on the dark web called The Love Zone, which hosted child abuse material. Only those who uploaded material could gain ­access to the database.

Griffith – under the username Zimble – shared videos of six children being touched and digitally penetrated at a childcare facility.

Queensland detectives took over The Love Zone and covertly ran it to identify child sex offenders, making arrests around the world, but Zimble’s identity remained unknown until officers from the Australian Federal Police tracked a bedsheet in one of the recordings to a Brisbane childcare centre.

That led investigators to the home of Griffith and his mother.

Griffith sat stony-faced through­out proceedings, wearing a floral shirt and cargo jacket and separated by a wall of glass from the families he had destroyed.

In folders named after the little girls and the sexual abuse they endured, Griffith had evidence of more than 600 assaults he perpetrated over 19½ years, beginning when he was 23.

In some instances, Griffith used a tripod and filmed different ­angles of the same incident and created montages.

These acts included kissing, touching and rubbing himself on the vulva, buttocks and mouth of the girls, sometimes to ejaculation. The girls were often asleep or distracted by play or a device.

Parents of the girls, largely aged between three and five, were asked to view the footage to confirm their identities.

Several times, Griffith attempted to delete the material but later recovered it.

Public prosecutor Todd Fuller and crown prosecutor Stephanie Gallagher, right, outside the Supreme Court. Picture: Glenn Campbell/NewsWire

Griffith said in a psychological assessment conducted this month that he was attracted to “cheeky girls”. He was found to have no other existing conditions or disorders able to explain the offending or reduce his moral culpability.

“He stated the relationship was not purely sexual,” the assessment report read.

“He felt love towards some of them and a nurturing feeling.”

While he attested to always listening to the child, there was footage of him “mocking” a girl who told him to stop because it was “yucky”.

The report also found him at a high risk of reoffending if released into the community, concluding he lacked empathy for the victims and minimised his actions to justify what he did.

Two sisters, now young adults, who were among Griffith’s first victims in the late-2000s told the court that the family was contacted by AFP investigators three days before their year 12 graduation.

“Ashley was my favourite teacher at kindy, and he is a key memory,” one of them said.

The university student said she still could not tell her friends what happened to her.

“It’s something that if you share with people, they look at you differently, and it’s the first thing that crosses their mind when they see you. I don’t want this to be something that defines me.”