Former childcare worker Ashley Paul Griffith sentenced to life in prison

ABC NEWS (Australia)

One of the country's most notorious paedophiles has been sentenced to life in prison for the rape and abuse of dozens of girls in childcare centres in Queensland and overseas.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon. Well, Ashley Paul Griffith has just learned his punishment. As you said,

00:07Judge Paul Smith has handed him a life sentence. Now, this comes a couple of months after he

00:11pleaded guilty to more than 300 offences. Those included multiple counts of rape and

00:17making child exploitation material. Now, this offending took place over almost 20 years

00:24before, between 2003 and 2022, and it involved 69 young girls aged between two and seven

00:32years old. It also happened in early learning centres, the bulk of those offences in Brisbane

00:39and some overseas in Italy as well. Now, as you can imagine, a lot of the details in this

00:44case are far too graphic to repeat. And what we do know, what we heard in court, that he

00:50was very calculated in this offending and he used his power and his position as a childcare

00:57educator to isolate these children. Now, all of those things wrapped together, this

01:01abuse of power was something Judge Paul Smith took into consideration. He described these

01:07crimes as depraved and abhorrent, and that is why he's handed him this maximum sentence

01:13of life. He's also increased the non-parole eligibility date. So generally in Queensland

01:19for these types of crimes, it would be 15 years. That's been increased to 27.

01:24And Talisa, has there been any reaction from the victims, the victims' families?

01:30Yes, as the sentence was being handed down, Ashley Griffith himself didn't react at all,

01:38really. He stayed pretty front-facing. There was nothing from him, but behind him in a

01:44very packed gallery were a lot of his victims' parents, some of the victims as well who are

01:50now adults, and they were very much elated. Some of them cheered into the air, they were

01:56smiling, they were crying. As he was being led away, they actually yelled out, some actually

02:01yelled out some profanities at him. Outside of court, we did have some family members

02:05who did want to speak to us, and they said that they do feel that justice has been served.

02:12They are happy that it was the maximum sentence. Despite still being upset about the things

02:18that have happened to their children, they do believe that they can feel some sort of

02:22closure being able to tell them that he'll be in jail for a very long time.

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