A former childcare worker who abused nearly 70 children in Queensland and Italy was sentenced today by the Brisbane District Court to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 27 years.
The Gold Coast man, Ashley Paul Griffith, 46, pleaded guilty on 2 September 2024 to 307 charges, including 15 counts of repeated sexual contact with a child, 28 counts of rape and 190 counts of indecent treatment of a child under 16.
The charges relate to 65 children Griffith abused in Southeast Queensland and four in Italy.
The AFP arrested Griffith in August 2022, following a painstaking investigation that started in 2014 when the Queensland Police Service (QPS) located 46 images and 10 videos the man had created and uploaded to the dark web.
QPS posted the material to the International Child Sexual Exploitation database, seeking assistance from the global victim-identification community to piece together clues that could identify the offender, the victims and their location.
The material contained so few distinguishable clues it was not even certain at first which country the offending had taken place in, and the matter was never referred to a specific law enforcement agency.
Even knowing the perpetrator and victims may not be in Australia, AFP victim identification specialists determined they would never give up on trying to solve the case.
AFP specialists kept going back to the images and videos, searching for the vital clue that would break open the case and reveal the identity of the man or his victims or their location.
As they went back time after time to the images and videos and started to piece tiny clues together, it became apparent the offending had taken place in a childcare setting in Australia, and AFP investigators started making enquiries.
Building on each vital clue they uncovered, including bedsheets visible in some of the material, investigators narrowed the search down to Southeast Queensland as the likely location of the childcare centre.
On 18 August 2022, the AFP confirmed that a Brisbane childcare centre was the location in the material after matching it to the bedsheets and other distinguishable features of the rooms in the background.
On 19 August, enquiries at the childcare centre confirmed the man’s identity. Within 24 hours, a search warrant had been executed at a property linked to Griffith in Brisbane’s southwest suburbs, where he was located and arrested.
In the next 48 hours, the AFP executed two further search warrants, including at Griffith’s Gold Coast home, and seized electronic devices containing child abuse material created by Griffith that contained dozens of victims.
As searches of Griffith’s digital material revealed the full scale of the offending – 64 victims in Queensland and four in Italy – the major focus of Operation Tenterfield became identifying the children and detailing every offence he had committed.
In September 2022, the AFP coordinated a week-long joint-agency taskforce with QPS and the Department of Home Affairs at the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) to review nearly 4000 images and videos of child abuse material Griffith created.
Investigators obtained childcare records from locations where Griffith worked to assist with identifying the victims.
The AFP is highly confident it has identified all the children in the seized material created by Griffith.
The parents of all Queensland children recorded in the alleged child abuse material have been informed. Some of the individuals identified in the alleged child abuse material are now aged over 18 years and have been informed. Support services have been offered and continue to be provided to victim and their families.
The AFP has also worked with Italian authorities to identify each of the four children recorded in alleged child abuse material Griffith created in Italy.
In August 2023, after all Queensland victims had been identified and informed, the AFP announced the results of Operation Tenterfield, leading to the AFP receiving thousands of calls about this matter.
Investigators from the Queensland Joint Anti-Child Exploitation Team (JACET) considered all information provided to the AFP in these phone calls.
As a result of one of those phone calls, officers from the Queensland JACET charged Griffith with an additional offence.
The new charge, which Griffith pleaded guilty to, relates to offences he committed between 2003 and 2004 at a Brisbane after-school care facility, where he worked as a volunteer and subsequently on a casual basis.
The AFP wishes to thank the public for their assistance and support throughout the investigation.
Investigators continue to invite members of the public who may have had contact with Griffith to come forward and provide that information.
Operation Tenterfield has not been finalised, so parents, childcare workers or anyone with information about this matter can still provide it to the AFP, where it will be carefully considered for the potential to identify more offending and add appropriate criminal charges.
The AFP has also spoken to all Queensland childcare centres where Griffith has worked and commended them for the information they have provided.
