Today in ‘That Never Happens! (But Constantly Does)’ is a particularly shocking one. Similar to the horrific case of Ashley Paul Griffith, possibly Australia’s most prolific paedophile, a male childcare worker has been arrested and charged with dozens of offences.
A daycare worker charged with more than 70 child sex offences was photographed sporting blue hair with his boyfriend around the time he is accused of committing the crimes.
The news for thousands of parents is particularly distressing, with the Victorian Department of Health and Victoria Police contacting some 2600 families, urging them to have their children tested for infectious diseases.
[Joshua Dale Brown], from Point Cook, southwest of Melbourne, is facing charges including the sexual penetration of a child, producing child abuse material and recklessly contaminating goods to cause alarm or anxiety.
The alleged offending happened during his time at Creative Garden Early Learning Centre Point Cook, where he worked between October 2021 and February 2024.
In December 2021, Brown’s partner posted a photo of the pair which featured the alleged paedophile grinning with pink and blue dyed hair.
Like Ashley Griffith, Brown certainly got around the childcare beat.
Brown worked at a total of 20 childcare centres over an eight-year period between January 2017 and May 2025, and authorities have contacted 2,600 families of children who attended the centres in a bid to have them tested for unnamed diseases.
Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan said she was ‘sickened by these allegations of abuse’.
Brown has remained in custody since his arrest in mid-May. His Point Cook home was raided by police shortly after an investigation was launched earlier that same month.
He was not known to police before his arrest and had a valid Working With Children Check, which has since been cancelled.
As is the way with these creeps. They don’t, after all, make a habit of advertising their perversions (unless it’s for a ‘NOMAPs’ sympathy-trawling piece by the ‘progressive’ media). And, like flies to honey, they’re naturally attracted to places that give them access to fresh victims.
Minister for Children Lizzie Blandthorn said an investigation into whether there was anything educators could have done would begin immediately.
She said the department would consider other security measures including the introduction of security cameras.
‘Childcare is regulated in a national context… it’s complex, but there has been an occasion over the last period of time in which jurisdictions have questioned the adequacy of the national law and have been working with the Commonwealth on how we can improve it,’ she said.
‘One of the areas, for example, … that I would like to see brought forward is a national system for registration for workers.’
Victoria Police Acting Commander Janet Stevenson said the case had been ‘deeply distressing’.
She did not reveal what sparked the police investigation but assured the public no other childcare workers were alleged to be involved.
Maybe not in this case, but unfortunately we know that other childcare workers were also predators. Aside from the abovementioned monster, Ashley Griffith, there was a NSW childcare worker charged last year with abusing eight children at a regional daycare centre. Early this year, as well, Quoc Phu Tong, 35, pleaded guilty to touching a young boy on the groin and bottom over the boy’s clothes in September last year at a daycare centre on Sydney’s northern beaches. In 2023, Muhammad Ali of the ACT was convicted of indecently touching a boy while working at a Canberra daycare center.
These are just some of the thousands of cases – more than 26,000 cases in 2024 alone – of children being sexually and physically abused while in childcare.
As I’ve asked before: Why would you trust your toddler to strangers?
UPDATE
A second man has been charged with dozens of sex crimes against children – including rape. The new charges are not related to childcare facilities and relate to different children than those abused by Brown. However, police say that the newest accused child rapist, Michael Simon Wilson, is ‘known to’ Brown. The exact relationship between the two has not been made clear, but Wilson’s alleged abuse was uncovered by the same major investigation that exposed Brown.
Court records show Wilson is due to appear in court in September on the same day as Brown to face 45 charges including rape and possession of child abuse material.
Victoria Police declined to comment on the Wilson matter as it is before the court.
