Nursery paedophile jailed after admitting to molesting young children | ITV News

Описание: Nursery paedophile Vincent Chan has been jailed for 18 years for molesting young children in a campaign of sexual abuse dubbed "every parent's worst nightmare".

The 45-year-old preyed on children as young as two years old when they were left in his care at the Bright Horizons nursery in north London, touching them sexually while they were sleeping.

A Metropolitan Police investigation also uncovered that Chan had taken upskirt videos of girls in class when he worked as a teaching assistant at a north London school.

He has confessed to spying on girls and women as they got undressed in their bedrooms and used the toilet, as well as sexually assaulting a woman as she slept.

And he also had amassed a collection of at least 26,000 indecent images of children online, including clips of youngsters being raped.

On Thursday, at Wood Green Crown Court, Judge John Dodd KC, the Recorder of Haringey, jailed Chan for 18 years for an "utterly wicked, perverse, and depraved" catalogue of abuse lasting 15 years.

He said the mass of images and videos found by police clearly displays Chan's "deep-seated sexual obsession" with children.

"Every right thinking person hearing about your offending would feel revulsion and disbelief", he said.

"You became a sexual predator and someone who clearly lost all sense of moral compass."

The judge said Chan's early offending had largely been confined to "looking, watching, and recording".

"That all changed in 2017 when you left the primary school and took up your position in a nursery.

"Your offending escalated and became far more serious."

The judge said Chan had clearly planned his offences at the nursery, to avoid being caught, saying: "The breach of trust could hardly be greater.

"The nursery is a place where every parent and guardian expects their child will be safe."

Chan must serve at least two-thirds of the 18-year prison sentence, and will spend an extra eight years on licence once he is released.

Parents of some of Chan's victims, who sat in court to hear the sentence, are now taking legal action against Bright Horizons and have called for the nursery itself to be prosecuted.

"We believe their safeguarding failures created the perfect hunting ground for a predator", the parents said, in a statement issued through their lawyers Leigh Day.

"Chan was not a 'lone wolf', and this was not about extraordinary technical skill. He was able to operate for years in a workplace where safeguarding failures were missed, minimised or ignored."

The scale of Chan's offending was detailed for the first time in court on Thursday, with victims ranging from two years old up to a pensioner in her 70s and offences spanning from 2008 to 2024.

In impact statements, victims said they have been left devastated and coping with lasting trauma after being told about the abuse, while Chan's offending at the nursery and school - labelled "every parent's worst nightmare" - has shattered the trust of parents in early years care.

Hundreds of families who sent their children to the nursery and school where Chan worked received letters outlining his offending.

The parents of one of the girls Chan abused at the nursery said they had been overwhelmed by the impact of knowing their child was "harmed at a time when she should have been safest".

Her mother added that Chan gave the family a hand-drawn goodbye card when they left the nursery, which they originally thought was "a kind and thoughtful gesture", but it has now turned into "something deeply distressing".

A woman covertly recorded said she felt "violated and humiliated" and is now paranoid about using the bathroom, while the woman who was sexually assaulted as she slept dubbed Chan "a person who shows a total disregard for human dignity".

Chan worked as IT support and as a teaching assistant at the primary school in north London for 10 years before he joined the Bright Horizons nursery in 2017.

He was first reported to police by the nursery on May 25 2024, over concerns that he "had been filming children in his care who were clearly distressed, crying, wetting themselves or eating their own mucus, superimposing audio or imagery over the videos in an apparent attempt at humour".

He was arrested on suspicion of child neglect, but searches of his electronic devices led officers to the sexual offending.

Among a mass of at least 26,000 downloaded indecent images of children, police found videos taken at the nursery itself of girls aged two to four years old being sexually abused by Chan.

He had filmed himself carrying out the attacks during naptime, and later organised the clips into folders labelled with the victim's name.

When he was employed at the primary school, Chan used a camera to take pictures up the skirts of girls as they sat at their desks, and he also filmed himself masturbating in the empty classroom.