Childcare manager Yolanda Borucki has been found not guilty of computer hacking after she went to the media about Australia’s worst paedophile, Ashley Paul Griffith, with a magistrate finding the prosecution failed to prove basic essential elements of the charge.

Magistrate Kerrie O’Callaghan delivered the decision on Friday morning, 16 months after Ms Borucki’s home was raided by detectives from Queensland’s online child exploitation squad, Task Force Argos, following a complaint from her former employer, the Uniting Church.

“The prosecution has failed to prove the elements of the offence beyond reasonable doubt. I find Ms Borucki not guilty and the charge is dismissed,” Ms O’Callaghan said.

Ms Borucki, 60, cried in court and hugged husband Victor, who, sitting in the Brisbane Magistrates Court public gallery, had clapped after the verdict was delivered.

“I am relieved but exhausted too,” she said outside court.

She had been represented pro bono in the criminal proceedings by barrister Patrick McCafferty KC and law firm Behlau Murakami Grant.

After the acquittal, her lawyers blamed the Uniting Church for instigating the failed prosecution, and criticised police for pushing ahead with it. The charge carried a maximum 10-year jail sentence.

In the end the case fell well short, raising questions about why it was pursued amid powerful arguments from Ms Borucki’s lawyers that she had served the public’s interest in bringing to light details of a missed opportunity to stop Griffith from raping and abusing children in daycare.

Ms O’Callaghan found the prosecution failed to prove Ms Borucki was the person who sent a series of emails with attachments from her work account to her private account and to a journalist.

While Ms Borucki’s work laptop did meet the legal definition of being a restricted computer, the prosecution failed to prove she used it without consent, or that she had caused financial detriment over $5000, the magistrate found.

The alleged detriment was that the Uniting Church spent $11,000 on lawyers dealing with the alleged privacy and confidentiality breach.

Police have said they laid the charge after a complaint of computer hacking, but the church sought to distance itself after the verdict, saying it was not a party to the proceedings.

“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,” a Queensland synod spokesman said.

“As these proceedings were between the Queensland Police Service and the individual it would be inappropriate for us to comment further.”

Ms Borucki will now seek to have her suspended blue card to work with children reinstated, defence lawyer Jason Murakami said.

“Today’s decision vindicates my client. However, it does not vindicate the behaviour of the Uniting Church Queensland and the resulting prosecution. My client should have been given a bravery reward for her actions but instead she was prosecuted at the behest of the Uniting Church Queensland,” Mr Murakami said.

The Weekend Australian can now reveal that in the weeks leading up to the trial, Mr Murakami wrote to the police prosecution service urging it to drop the charge.

Dated November 8, his letter stated that he would not go into why the defence believed the case would fail, but said it was “not in the public interest for it to continue” against a woman with no prior criminal history.

“The public interest in this matter is understandably remarkable. But not at our client’s conduct. Rather, at how Mr Griffith was able to commit his offending for so long,” he wrote.

When the trial went ahead last month, defence barrister Mr McCafferty questioned if the hacking charge was an act of retaliation by the church.

Ms Borucki had revealed in an interview on A Current Affair that Griffith was seen “kissing” a little girl in a fort at a Brisbane childcare centre run by the church in October 2021.

Police dismissed the complaint against Griffith, and another complaint from a mother in April 2022, without searching his home or seizing his devices, and say they did not have enough evidence to do more than they did.

After police dismissed the October 2021 complaint, Griffith returned to work at the Uniting Church daycare centre.

Then, after he was told he was being made redundant, he raped a little girl at the same daycare centre before moving on to work at other centres where he abused at least three more girls.

Griffith, now 46, last month was jailed in the District Court in Brisbane for at least 27 years for his abuse of 65 girls in Queensland and four in Italy.

He now faces extradition to NSW for allegedly abusing dozens more girls at a single childcare centre in Sydney.

It was revealed this week that he was accused 15 years ago of sexually abusing a little boy at a daycare centre in a complaint that was almost instantly dismissed by Queensland police.

State and federal police had never publicly revealed the earlier complaint, and it came to light only after the boy’s mother released a heartbreaking statement.

She said police spent only minutes with her son before dismissing his report to her of sexual abuse by Griffith, while another officer she approached later told her it “sounded like a rough nappy change”.