British nursery worker admits sexually assaulting children

A British nursery worker from London has pleaded guilty to 26 offenses against children, including nine counts of sexual assault, in what the Metropolitan Police has described as "one of the most harrowing and complex child sexual abuse investigations" undertaken by the force, reports CNN.
Vincent Chan, a 45-year-old man living in north London, was also found guilty of the taking and making of indecent images of children, police said in a statement on Wednesday.

He will be sentenced on January 23, according to PA Media.

"The offences include five counts of sexual assault of a child by penetration, four counts of sexual assault of a child by touching," the police said, adding that Chan also pleaded guilty to 11 counts of taking indecent photographs of a child and six counts of making indecent photographs.

Some of those images depicted the most severe category of abuse and one woman in the public gallery cried as the charges were read out, PA reported.

Chan was initially arrested in June 2024 after a member of staff at a London nursery reported that the man had been capturing disturbing footage of the children on a work device.

After seizing 28 digital devices, forensic teams uncovered "substantial amounts of indecent images and videos of children," that led to Chan, who worked at the nursery for almost seven years, being formally charged with child sexual offenses in September.

In total, 69 devices were retrieved and analyzed by police officers as part of this investigation, which found Chan had been using a nursery-issued iPad to record videos depicting "sexual contact offending" against children within the nursery while he was responsible for minding them, police said.

He distorted the footage by adding superimpositions and music for comedic purposes, and shared stills with his colleagues, according to police.

The lead investigator on the case, Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford, said Chan's offenses spanned years, "revealing a calculated and predatory pattern of abuse."

"He infiltrated environments that should have been safe havens for children, exploiting the trust of families and the wider community to conceal his actions and prey on the most vulnerable," Basford added.

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