Child predators ‘slip through the cracks’

Spate of recent daycare abuse cases prompts concern over protection laws, writes Laura Chung

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Serial child sexual abuse cases in Australian daycare centres have spurred a rush to close security gaps that let predators through the door.

New legislation will bring in a national register of childcare workers from 2026, impose compulsory safety training, ban the use of personal phones by carers and start a trial of CCTV monitoring.

It aims to address safety deficiencies in a childcare sector that has boomed thanks to government funding.

In Australia’s most notorious case, nursery school worker Ashley Paul Griffith preyed on children for nearly 20 years.

He pled guilty last year to more than 300 charges of abusing and raping over 60 children — most of them girls — while working in childcare centres between 2003 and 2022.

Some of his victims may have been as young as 12 months old, police say.

Griffith, who was sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 27 years, has filed for an appeal against the sentence.

In July this year, another case shook the sector.

The state of Victoria's police charged 26-year-old Joshua Dale Brown with more than 70 crimes against eight children aged from five months to two years.