Paedophile nursery worker Vincent Chan admits 30 new offences

A paedophile nursery worker has admitted a series of new charges including filming up the skirts of girls as they sat in a school classroom.

Vincent Chan, 45, is facing years behind bars for molesting girls aged three and four while working at the Bright Horizons nursery in Finchley Road, West Hampstead, north London.

Chan filmed himself carrying out the abuse, during naptime at the nursery, and also confessed to downloading thousands of indecent images of children.

On Thursday at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court, Chan appeared via videolink from HMP Pentonville to face 30 new charges.

He pleaded guilty to 12 counts of taking indecent photographs of children, six charges of outraging public decency, sexual assault on a female, and 11 counts of voyeurism.

Because of his guilty pleas, Chan has now admitted filming up the skirts of children as they sat at tables in a school classroom.

Police also recovered images showing Chan exposing himself in a classroom in 2017, as well as videos, believed to be of Chan, depicting a solo sex act, also in a classroom.

He has also admitted a campaign of voyeurism between 2011 and 2023.

Scotland Yard said he had placed hidden cameras around his home to film women getting changed, and he has also confessed to sexually assaulting a woman while she was asleep.

The new set of charges relate to ten girls and six women, and did not take place at Bright Horizons, said the Met.

Chan will be sentenced on February 12 for all 56 offences that he has now admitted.

“Vincent Chan is a dangerous and predatory individual, and the scale of his abhorrent offending is shocking”, said Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford, who has led the investigation.

“Chan’s history demonstrates to us that he has sought out positions of trust involving contact with young girls, which allowed him to commit his crimes unchecked for so long.

“He has repeatedly exploited the trust of those around him, proving himself to be a danger to all girls and women.”

Chan worked at the Bright Horizons nursery for seven years until he was suspended in 2024, after a colleague raised concerns about his activities with the children.

The whistleblower complained that Chan had filmed a child falling asleep and set the footage to music, in a bid to entertain his colleagues.

The Metropolitan Police investigation that followed unearthed Chan’s collection of more than 25,000 indecent images of children.

Among them were videos taken by Chan himself as he sexually assaulted some of the children at the nursery while they were sleeping at naptime.

In the new charges, Chan has admitted taking indecent images of children in 2024 and 2025, as well as outraging public decency offences in the classroom between 2011 and July 2017.

One of Chan’s videos, from June 2011, showed him filming a girl “from under a classroom table with the camera angled directly at her legs”, the court heard.

Sixteen images were identified of a schoolgirl taken “from under a classroom table with the camera angled in a manner designed to capture intimate parts of her body”.

Chan also had 13 images from 2016 showing “two unidentified female child victims with the camera angled in a manner designed to capture intimate parts of her body”.

In June 2017, Chan admitted “taking three images of a male holding an exposed penis whilst in classroom”, and having a video showing a solo sex act in a classroom.

In July 2017, Chan admitted “taking seven photos of him holding his exposed penis in a classroom”.

The classroom offences happened at a school in north London where Chan was employed from 2007 to 2017, before he joined Bright Horizons.

Chan also pleaded guilty to taking indecent images of children between 2011 and 2016, sexual assault of a female in 2011, and nine counts of voyeurism involving the covert recording of people as they did private acts.

In December, Chan appeared at Wood Green Crown Court to plead guilty to the first 26 charges he faced – five charges of sexual assault by penetration, four counts of sexual assault by touching, 11 charges of taking indecent images of children, and six counts of making indecent images of children.

Police had recovered video evidence of Chan sexually abusing four young girls at the nursery.

After the hearing, parents of children who went to the Bright Horizons nursery issued a statement saying: “We feel that Bright Horizons has failed us.

“How was someone like Vincent Chan employed? Why did safeguarding systems fail completely? And how were such horrific crimes against children able to continue for so long without the staff responsible for safeguarding at Bright Horizons nursery acting?

“We are concerned that failures in management and supervision at Bright Horizons allowed this abuse to go undetected, and we are committed to securing accountability for our children.”

On Thursday, lawyers at Leigh Day, who are representing some of the parents, said they were “sickened” to learn of Chan’s further offending “prior to his time at Bright Horizons Finchley Road”.

“These further allegations raise deeply troubling questions about how safeguarding systems could have failed so badly that someone actively offending was able to secure employment as a nursery worker and offend without intervention for a number of years.”

Bright Horizons said in a statement in December that it was “shocked and appalled” at the crimes, and has commissioned an expert review of its safeguarding practices.

The families of 700 children who attended the nursery during the time Chan worked there, between 2017 and 2024, have been contacted and are receiving specialist support.

A dedicated NSPCC helpline has been set up for anyone affected by Chan’s offending, on 0800 028 0828, which operates from 8am-8pm Monday to Friday and 9am-6pm on weekends.

Anyone who wants to make a report to police about Chan can contact OpLanark@met.police.uk, or call 101 from within the UK, quoting the reference CAD3697/1DEC.

Chan, of Stanhope Avenue, Finchley, north London, remains in custody ahead of sentencing next month.