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A paedophile former nursery worker has been jailed for 18 years at Wood Green crown court for the “wicked” sexual abuse of young children.
Vincent Chan abused young children in his care – engaging in physical sexual abuse, taking obscene photos of them and creating others using software – as well as taking obscene images of himself in a classroom. He also set up cameras to watch women changing or going to the toilet, and sexually assaulted a woman while she was asleep.
The judge, John Dodd KC, told Chan he had behaved in a “sexually deviant manner” in committing “utterly wicked, perverse and depraved” crimes against people whom he had owed trust – taking advantage of them as they slept to sexually abuse them.
Referring to his victims, he told Chan they were too young to protect themselves, and too young to tell an adult. “They were defenceless.” He added: “There are so many of them: from the children involved to their parents; those who worked alongside you and those who were close to you.”
Dodd gave the example of one child too young to write her own victim impact statement, but whose pain was clear in the statement made on her behalf. He said that, while many parents placed some blame on themselves for being unable to protect their children from Chan, they bore no responsibility. The responsibility, the judge said, was Chan’s alone.
Chan, from Finchley in north London, pleaded guilty to 56 charges. For a decade from 2007, he worked at a school where he upskirted pupils. He went on to work at a nursery for nearly seven more years, where he filmed himself abusing four young children at a since-closed branch of Bright Horizons in West Hampstead, north-west London.
Speaking at his sentencing hearing on Thursday, friends and relatives of those he abused told him he had profoundly broken them, adding: “As parents, we live with constant fear about how it may affect our child as she grows,” adding that the trauma was compounded by the knowledge he had recorded the abuse. “Our child was harmed without the ability to protect herself. She was harmed at a time when she should have been safe.”
One of the victims said the abuse to which Chan had subjected her had left her fearful she was being watched whenever she went to a bathroom.
His crimes came to light when he showed a colleague two videos – one of a child falling asleep in their food, which he had set to music, and a second of a child crying on the floor. The former colleague reported him to management, who spoke to police.
Detectives arrested him on suspicion of child cruelty and seized dozens of electronic devices, for which he refused to give passwords. Once they were cracked, detectives found more than 1m images and videos of child abuse, and reviewed 300 hours of material – leading to his rearrest and the further, more serious charges.
Officers have said more than 600 pupils passed through the school while Chan was working there and the nature of some of the photographs he took means they are unlikely ever to be able to specifically identify which of them he victimised.
While police believe they have found all of the devices containing evidence of the abuse of children, and that offending can be isolated to his two places of work, they fear it could emerge he has abused more adult women, either without their knowledge or without a report having been made.
In December, Chan appeared at Wood Green crown court to plead guilty to 26 charges: five counts of sexual assault by penetration, four of sexual assault by touching, 11 of taking indecent images of children, and six of making indecent images of children.
In January, he admitted 30 new charges: 12 counts of taking indecent photographs of children, six of outraging public decency, sexual assault on a female, and 11 counts of voyeurism.
The judge sentenced him on five lead counts to 26 years; 18 of them to be served in prison, with a further eight years on extended licence. He told Chan he would become eligible for parole two-thirds of the way through the custodial portion of his sentence and, if released, would serve the remainder of that portion on licence, plus the eight years of extended licence. He was given separate sentences on the other 51 charges to run concurrently.
Bright Horizons is facing legal action by a group of families who had children at the nursery.
A dedicated NSPCC helpline has been set up for anyone affected by Chan’s offending, on 0800 028 0828, which operates from 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday and 9am-6pm at weekends.
