SYDNEY, Nov 29, 2024 (AFP) - A former Australian nursery school worker was sentenced to life in prison Friday for sexually abusing dozens of children, in a case described as "depraved" and "beyond the realms of anyone's imagination".

Ashley Paul Griffith pleaded guilty to raping and sexual abusing more than 60 children -- most of them girls -- while working in childcare centres between 2003 and 2022.

Included in the more than 300 charges were 28 counts of rape.
Sentencing judge Paul Smith said the 46-year-old's crimes had caused "significant harm".

"People expect that their children will be protected in childcare centres," he said in his sentencing remarks.

"The offences were depraved and committed by a man with a high risk of re-offending."

Police believed some of his victims may have been as young as 12 months old at the time.

Detectives started hunting for Griffith a decade ago after discovering a cache of child pornography shared anonymously on the dark web.

But their efforts had been mostly fruitless until they made an unexpected breakthrough by matching visual clues in the background of the images to a childcare centre in the city of Brisbane.

After charging him in 2023, senior officer Michael Fitzgerald said it was "one of the most horrific cases" of child abuse the police force had seen.

"It's beyond the realms of anyone's imagination what this person did to these children," he said at the time.

"I can only say, you try not to be shocked after a long period of time in the police, but this is a horrific case."

Griffith had passed the stringent series of background checks needed to work at childcare centres in the states of Queensland and New South Wales.