Police in Australia charged a former child-care worker with abusing 91 girls over the course of 15 years in a case they said was “beyond the realms of anyone’s imagination.”
They announced 1,623 charges Tuesday against the unnamed 45-year-old man, which included 136 counts of rape and 110 counts of sexual intercourse with a child under 10.
The alleged crimes took place between 2007 and 2022 while he was working at 10 child-care centers in Brisbane, one in Sydney and an early-learning center in an unnamed overseas country, police said. The man also recorded his alleged offenses on phones and cameras, they said.
“This is one of the most horrific child abuse cases that I’ve seen in nearly 40 years of policing,” New South Wales Police Assistant Commissioner Michael Fitzgerald told reporters Tuesday. “It’s beyond the realms of anyone’s imagination what this person did to these children.”
The charges announced Tuesday are the culmination of a years-long investigation by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) after Queensland police found images and videos of alleged child abuse on the dark web in 2014.
The man, from Australia’s Gold Coast, was arrested in Brisbane in August 2022, police said, and was at the time charged with making and distributing child abuse material allegedly on the dark web. The AFP launched “Operation Tenterfield” immediately after his arrest, it said in the statement Tuesday, and he remains in custody.
While the dark web is not in itself illegal, it is a layer of the internet visible only with special browsers, where some participants engage in illicit activities including hacking and cybercrime, drug offenses and child pornography.
“The AFP believes the man recorded all his alleged offending” while working at the child-care centers, police said, adding that they are not naming the centers to protect the alleged victims’ identities.
“This is chilling news,” AFP Northern Assistant Commissioner Justine Gough said in a statement Tuesday. “It is with a heavy-heart that the AFP and other law enforcement dedicate so much time and resources to prevent and take action against individuals who commit heinous crimes against children.”
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