Australian police claimed Tuesday, August 1, that a former daycare worker had assaulted 91 girls over the course of 15 years, adding that he had documented his "unfathomable" crimes in thousands of photographs and videos.
Expert investigators have called it "beyond the realms of anyone's imagination" and one of Australia's most horrific child sex abuse instances.
The 1,623 total counts include 136 instances of rape, 110 counts of sexual intercourse with a child younger than 10 (which is used in place of rape in certain Australian jurisdictions), and 613 counts of creating child pornography.
Discovery of Child Pornography on Dark Web
A general view of the Australian Federal Police emblem during a press conference about the terrorism raids that took place in Melbourne this morning at Victoria Police Centre on September 30, 2014 in Melbourne, Australia.
Since 2014, when an enormous amount of child pornography was discovered on the dark web, investigators have been trying to track down a 45-year-old male. Their search for answers was mostly unproductive until one lucky break in August 2022, when they were able to link background details in the photos to a daycare in the Australian city of Brisbane.
Three charges were filed against the individual at first, but assistant federal police commissioner Justine Gough claims that when police dug further into his digital assets, the true scope of his heinous alleged actions became clear. "This is chilling and shocking news for parents," she stated.
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Assaults at Ten Different Daycares
According to the investigation, the suspect documented over 4,000 images and videos depicting various acts of abuse.
CBS News said that the assault, which the police say only affected "prepubescent girls," occurred at ten separate daycares between 2007 and 2022. It included children as young as one.
Investigators spent many hours studying the photos in order to positively identify 87 of the 91 victims, the vast majority of whom were from the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales.
From 2013 to 2014, the guy worked abroad, and throughout that time, he molested four more children who have yet to be identified. The police have said that they are now collaborating with foreign criminal agencies to locate the children in question. However, they have not specified which country is the primary focus of their efforts.
"We have been working tirelessly since August last year to identify the children in the alleged child abuse material," Gough stated.
The guy had previously worked at other child care centers in Australia, but authorities there are highly confident he did not engage in any kind of child abuse while there.
Police said that he had successfully completed an array of background checks required for employment at childcare facilities in the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales.
Col Briggs, the acting assistant police commissioner in Queensland, said that officers had been on the case since 2021, but a lack of evidence had slowed their progress. "There was insufficient evidence to take action against any person based on evidence available at the time."
The unidentified guy is set to appear in court in Queensland on August 21. His current case is being finalized so that he may be extradited to New South Wales to face further charges.
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