Michael Salter, a professor of criminology at the University of New South Wales, said many cases of sexual abuse in child care only came to light when offenders uploaded evidence of their crimes online, not because centres detected or reported the abuse.<\/p>\n
“The offenders are giving us the picture \u2026 The offenders are choosing early child care as a conducive place for the abuse of children.<\/p>\n
“They are telling us that we have a massive problem.”<\/p>\n
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Michael Salter says the material found on the dark web is “worse than people could possibly imagine”. (Four Corners: Rob Hill)<\/p>\n
Professor Salter said the sharing of this disturbing material had been facilitated by the so-called dark web, enabled by anonymising browser software such as Tor, and encrypted messaging services such as Telegram, Signal and WhatsApp.<\/p>\n
“We’ve created spaces beyond the reach of the law where child sex offenders can congregate in their millions,” Professor Salter said.<\/p>\n
“There’s about 45,000 child sexual abuse websites just on the Tor platform alone.<\/p>\n
“It’s estimated that the population of child sex offenders on the dark web numbers in its millions \u2014 and this is a place where they are sharing child abuse content, but they’re also creating and normalising cultures of sex offending.”<\/p>\n
If you or anyone you know needs help:<\/p>\n
Professor Salter advises the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, the creator of Arachnid \u2014 a system that hunts child abuse material across the web, including the dark web.<\/p>\n
“One statement from an offender on the dark web that really stood out for me was he said, ‘Babies are meat, babies are meat and you can’t tell me anything different,'” Professor Salter said.<\/p>\n
Four Corners asked Arachnid analysts to scrape dark web forums on child care to see how offenders talk and plan.<\/p>\n
Most of the material is too explicit to show, but the discussions reveal how organised and deviant they really are.<\/p>\n
One of these guides instructs predators applying for work at childcare centres on how to answer job interview questions about why they want to work with children.<\/p>\n
“First of all, I love children. And since I don’t have any of my own yet, I really feel like I’m missing out on something very important in life, that is being a father and having the role of taking care of and giving safety to children. I would really like to have this opportunity since I look at this profession and role as a gift,” the guide suggests as an answer.<\/p>\n
“One really good news for us paedophiles is that most daycare centers, or any similar institutions, look at men as a positive thing. This is because they want the children to have male role models \u2014 this is actually a very important subject in children pedagogy today,” the handbook says.<\/p>\n
Australia’s child care paedophile crisis exposed<\/a><\/p>\n The true scale of abuse in Australia’s childcare centres has been hidden. Until now.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, a forum user posts a step-by-step guide to abusing children.<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0work or volunteer\u2026 at a daycare and gain the trust of adults and kiddies.<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Bring toys to train target\u2026 make sure you aren’t in view of any cameras unless it’s your own then film away \u2026<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0do foreplay or massage target to relax them\u2026<\/p>\n One post from August this year reads: “My wife owns the daycare, and yes, she’s a pedo, so I have access to babies.<\/p>\n “I like kissing the little ones on the mouth\u2026 licking and sucking.”<\/p>\n Another user posted in December last year:<\/p>\n “There is a secret room where I can play with them.<\/p>\n “If anyone wants to know more, I’ll tell you in private.”<\/p>\n After the arrest of former Melbourne childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown, who has been charged with more than 70 offences, including sexually penetrating children, forum members defended the accused paedophile.<\/p>\n “You would think he was a real monster serial rapist who don’t give a shit about the well being of children \u2026 you can see the reality is totally different,” one user posted.<\/p>\n Accused paedophile and former Melbourne childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown. (Facebook)<\/p>\n Professor Salter said the disturbing nature of the material made it difficult for law enforcement to convey the gravity of the problem without “terrifying” the public.<\/p>\n “The truth is what we see online, it’s worse than people could possibly imagine. It’s beyond the outer bounds of a normal imagination.<\/p>\n “But \u2026 I think it’s beyond time that we shine a light on this and let the public know what’s been festering in the darkest corners of the internet.”<\/p>\n ‘One of the worst cases I’ve worked on’<\/p>\n Ashley Griffith is arguably Australia’s most prolific convicted paedophile.<\/p>\n For two decades he worked in child care until he was arrested in 2022 as part of an operation by specialist investigators from Queensland police and the Australian Federal Police, who identified him through posts he made on the dark web.<\/p>\n He was sentenced to life in November 2024 after pleading guilty to raping and assaulting 65 children in Queensland childcare centres and four children in a centre in Pisa, Italy.<\/p>\n He is awaiting trial for a series of alleged offences against 23 children in NSW.<\/p>\n Ashley Griffith posted material to the dark web which helped police catch him. (Supplied)<\/p>\n He was a member of dark web forums including The Love Zone, which was run by Shannon McCoole, an Adelaide childcare worker and Families SA foster carer, who was arrested in June 2014, and is now serving a 32-year prison sentence.<\/p>\n His group required members to upload videos showing children being abused \u2014 each child forced to hold a sign with the offender’s username, the date, and the words “The Love Zone”.<\/p>\n Drew Viney is a former federal agent who led the AFP’s National Victim Identification Team \u2014 an elite unit that works with authorities worldwide to unmask predators, identify child victims in abuse material, and rescue them from harm.<\/p>\n He helped catch Ashley Griffith and is speaking publicly about the case for the first time to Four Corners.<\/p>\n “Ashley Griffith is probably one of the worst cases I’ve worked on in terms of the sheer scale of it and the horror,” Mr Viney told Four Corners.<\/p>\n Drew Viney says the safeguards in place inside childcare centres are not enough to protect children from abuse. (Four Corners: Rob Hill)<\/p>\n “I remember sitting in an interview with him after his arrest when we decided that we’d found the person responsible for creating that child abuse material and asked him outright, ‘How many children do you think you’ve abused during your time in childcare centres?’ And he said, straight away, ‘100’.<\/p>\n “I thought he was exaggerating, self-aggrandising. Unfortunately, the inquiries that led after that showed that he wasn’t exaggerating.”<\/p>\n How can parents protect their kids at childcare centres?<\/a><\/p>\n The scale of Australia’s childcare crisis is deeply distressing for parents. These are the simple questions to ask any childcare provider to know if your child is safe.<\/p>\n In the hunt for Griffith, Mr Viney went inside dozens of childcare centres, trying to identify baby blankets or bedsheets that appeared in some of the videos he had uploaded on the dark web.<\/p>\n “The bedsheets \u2026 were found to be made by a small company in south-east Queensland that did them on small orders for childcare centres. We spoke to the provider, and they gave us a list of childcare centres that they had sold the sheets to,” he said.<\/p>\n He said inadequate supervision made childcare centres attractive to paedophiles.<\/p>\n “The psychology of these people is to seek out opportunity, and childcare centres represent an excellent opportunity for them,” he said.<\/p>\n “The safeguards that are in place just aren’t up to scratch.”<\/p>\n ‘Parents need to be vigilant’<\/p>\n Mike Bourke is a global authority on child sex offenders who has consulted with the FBI, CIA and Australian authorities to profile and track some of the world’s most dangerous predators.<\/p>\n He has interviewed more than 1,200 convicted paedophiles and has seen how they trade information with each other online.<\/p>\n Mike Bourke says sex offenders are using the dark web to support each other to abuse children. (Four Corners: Rob Hill)<\/p>\n “Once they find somewhere where the rules aren’t enforced, or a system like child care where people are getting away with all kinds of things, that goes viral in pedophilic networks.<\/p>\n “That information immediately goes out, and it’s shared with like-minded individuals, and they start gravitating to these places,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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