Ashley Paul Griffith was handcuffed and moved from Queensland custody to NSW on Wednesday, ending his time at Wolston Correctional Centre in Wacol and bringing him before new charges. He was seen for the first time since being sentenced to life behind bars in Queensland.
At 8.15am, there was a handover at Tweed Heads, and Griffith was transferred into NSW custody. He now faces 202 charges over alleged sexual abuse of children in Sydney between 2014 and 2017, including sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 10 years, indecent assault of a person under 16 and producing child abuse material.
Laura Gerber on the transfer
Queensland Corrections Minister Laura Gerber said Griffith was convicted of abhorrent sexual abuse against 69 children over the last two decades. She also said, “What Ashley Paul Griffith did to children was abhorrent, he’s a monster”.
Gerber said, “As a former prosecutor who put away paedophiles there was no way I was letting him travel by a private jet”. She added, “Ashley Paul Griffith travelled by road, and I’m going to say what most Queenslanders are thinking right now: I hope he hit every pothole on the way.”
Wolston Correctional Centre in Wacol
The transfer moved him out of Wolston Correctional Centre in Wacol and into a NSW process that now has to deal with another set of allegations on top of the Queensland sentence he was already serving. In 2024, Griffith admitted to offences against dozens of young girls at early learning centres in Queensland and Italy.
That sequence matters because the NSW matter does not reopen the Queensland sentence; it adds a separate legal track with 202 charges attached to alleged abuse said to have taken place in Sydney over a three-year period.
NSW charges and next step
The handover at Tweed Heads means NSW now has custody of Griffith and responsibility for the new case. The charges include offences that range from sexual intercourse with a child under 10 to producing child abuse material, and they extend the allegations beyond the Queensland conduct already put before the courts.
What remains for NSW to prove is the conduct underlying those 202 charges and the evidence supporting each count. For now, Griffith has been moved, the handover is complete, and the NSW prosecution begins with him in custody on the other side of the border.
