The Daily Populous Friday December 20th, 2024 evening edition
Authored by theguardian.com and submitted by satisfiedfools

A childcare centre manager who alerted police to one of Australia’s worst paedophiles has been found not guilty of computer hacking for using a restricted computer to inform the media.

Yolanda Borucki worked at the same Uniting Church childcare centre as Ashley Paul Griffith in 2021 and helped report him to authorities that year, but police and the centre rejected the allegations after an investigation.

Griffith was charged a year later after being linked to child sexual abuse material online by a different police unit. In September he was convicted of 307 child sexual offences committed over a period of nearly 20 years and last month was sentenced to serve life in prison.

A magistrate, Kerrie O’Callaghan, found Borucki not guilty of computer hacking for using a restricted computer without consent and causing detriment to the church worth more than $5,000.

Borucki broke down in tears on hearing the verdict on Friday.

Outside court, her lawyer Ron Behlau said his client was relieved by the decision, but that the case should never have been brought “let alone pursued so vigorously by the church and the police”.

“Her actions were heroic,” he said.

“She has suffered immeasurably through the prosecution process, and is now obviously very relieved. She looks forward to any inquiry conducted by the authorities to shed light on how Australia’s worst paedophile was permitted to work with children for such a long period and into those who enabled this to occur.”

View image in fullscreen A court sketch of Ashley Paul Griffith at sentencing in Brisbane in November. Photograph: AAP

Borucki was charged just days after appearing on A Current Affair revealing complaints of indecent behaviour by Griffith.

She was accused of sending 17 emails containing documents to her private email and to a Channel Nine employee, Daniel Nolan, on 3 August last year.

The emails allegedly contained private information about six families and children, including one of Griffith’s victims.

She pleaded not guilty and a trial was held at Brisbane magistrates court this year.

O’Callaghan found the prosecution had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Borucki had used the computer.

The magistrate also found that the prosecution had failed to prove that she did not have permission to send the emails or that doing so caused harm.

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O’Callaghan said that, unlike in another case involving police, her computer did not contain obvious warnings about sharing private information. She also dismissed a prosecution argument that a handbook issued to Borucki prohibited doing so, partly because there was no evidence it had been brought to her attention.

The magistrate also found that Borucki’s actions had not been established beyond reasonable doubt to have caused “psychological harm” to the families of Griffith’s victims.

The state government has launched an inquiry into the Griffith case by the Queensland Family and Child Commission.

Queensland police are also investigating claims that they ignored a 2009 complaint by a woman who believes her son was abused by Griffith. Griffith has not been charged with that offence.

Borucki was told she would be made redundant the day before Griffith was arrested and she was sacked shortly afterwards. Her blue card permitting her to work with children is suspended.

If convicted she would have faced a maximum of 10 years in prison.

A spokesperson for the Uniting Church in Australia, Queensland Synod said the church “was not a party to the criminal proceeding.

“The Uniting Church notified relevant authorities and regulators of a privacy data breach which resulted in the Queensland Police Service bringing the charge against the individual in question,” the spokesperson said.

MoralClimber on December 20th, 2024 at 11:01 UTC »

Seems like the church was way more interested in bringing charges against her for leaking the information than stopping a pedophile.

subUrbanMire on December 20th, 2024 at 10:20 UTC »

> Outside court, her lawyer Ron Behlau said his client was relieved by the decision, but that the case should never have been brought “let alone pursued so vigorously by the church and the police”.

I agree with her attorney: church and police response was quite a twist on "Thank you."

satisfiedfools on December 20th, 2024 at 10:15 UTC »

Australia has notoriously poor whistleblower protections. David McBride, an Australian Army lawyer, was jailed this year for leaking documents to the ABC that exposed evidence of war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan. None of the soldiers involved were ever tried.

Samantha Crompvoets was a government consultant who published a report detailing evidence of Australian SAS war crimes in Afghanistan in 2018. In 2023, she told the Sydney Morning Herald "She had suffered years of internet and phone attacks threatening to bash, kill or torture her and her livelihood has been destroyed to the extent she can no longer obtain government contracts. Before her war crime report, she was a go-to reviewer for the Defence Department, NSW Police and emergency services and the AFL. Now her company is in liquidation and her situation so desperate that she had her car repossessed by debt collectors a few weeks ago".

In 2021, the producer for Youtuber Friendlyjordies had his house raided by the NSW Police "Fixated Persons unit" and was charged with stalking a government minister. Jordies had criticised both this minister and NSW Police on his Youtube channel previously. The case against the producer was later thrown out. The Fixated Persons unit was eventually shut down but on the face of it, it appeared to be a special goon squad aimed at targeting whistleblowers and other potential "troublemakers". "Something of a team of detectives being used to settle vendettas" as one article put it.

Australia, and New South Wales in particular, is looking more and more like a police state by the day. In Sydney, we have police harassing people with drug detection dogs at pubs and train stations. People stopped by the dogs at music festivals are frequently subjected to fully naked strip searches. States around the country have passed random "stop and search" laws where police can randomly wand people with metal detectors. Anti protest laws are being passed around the country (in NSW you need a police permit to protest) and just a few weeks ago we passed an under 16s social media ban which will almost certainly lead to the implementation of a National ID.