Ashley Paul Griffith, a former Australian nursery school worker, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday after he was found guilty of sexual abuse of dozens of children in grave cases that are described as "depraved" and "beyond the realms of anyone's imagination".

Griffith, who worked at childcare centers between 2003 and 2022 pleaded guilty to raping and sexually abusing more than 60 children, majorly girls. Out of Griffith’s 300 charges, 28 were of rape. Sentencing judge Paul Smith said the 46-year-old's crimes had caused "significant harm". Police speculated that many of his victims may have been as young as 12 months old at the time. Detectives began searching for Griffith a decade ago after uncovering a cache of child pornography that had been shared anonymously on the dark web.

Although their efforts bore no fruit for a long time, an unexpected breakthrough occurred when detectives matched visual clues in the background of the images to a childcare center in the city of Brisbane. Griffith was first arrested in August 2022 by the Australian Federal Police, and a year later charged with more than 1,600 child sex offences. Most of these were eventually dropped.

Four of the girls featured in his videos were from a childcare center in Pisa, Italy. His other 65 victims were from 11 locations across Brisbane. Ahead of his sentence behind handed down, the court heard a string of emotional statements from some of those victims and their parents - who cannot be identified for legal reasons. Among them were two sisters who were abused in kindergarten, one of whom recalled Griffith being her favorite teacher. "To find out what he was really doing was devastating. I don’t seem to be able to process it even now, because there’s a disconnect between what I remember and the reality," she said, according to The Courier Mail.

The case has sparked widespread outrage and calls for increased vigilance and stricter regulations in the childcare industry. It has also raised questions about the effectiveness of background checks and the potential for undetected abuse within these institutions.