Nursery paedophile’s ‘heinous’ offending went undetected for 13 years

Paedophile Vincent Chan preyed on defenceless victims, with his crimes going undetected for 13 years.

The 45-year-old, from Finchley, north London, upskirted pupils and filmed himself performing a solo sex act in a classroom at a primary school where he was employed for 10 years from 2007-2017.

Chan worked in IT support but also as a teaching assistant, and was responsible for filming events for the school website.

He then went on to work in a nursery from 2017-2024, where he filmed himself sexually abusing four young children.

Chan filmed children and adults both in and around his home, with cameras positioned to catch women changing or using the toilet. He also sexually assaulted a woman while she was asleep.

Police said that he had an “obsession and fixation” with one girl whom he filmed.

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Senior investigating officer Detective Superintendent Lewis Basford said Chan had preyed upon victims “who don’t have a voice and can’t talk, or aren’t aware”.

He said: “Vincent Chan’s offending is the most abhorrent offending you could ever come across.

“He is a paedophile who preyed on the most vulnerable victims in child settings, both at primary schools and nursery establishments.

“At the time that he should have been nurturing and looking after those children, he committed the most vile offending.”

He called Chan “one of the most heinous individuals and predators that we have come across”.

James Bolton Smith from the Crown Prosecution Service said Chan’s crimes were “predatory and obsessive” and his assaults were committed against “victims who were either asleep or too young to talk back”.

Chan’s offences only came to light after he showed a nursery colleague a video of children crying and “clearly distressed” that he had set to music.

The worker reported his behaviour to nursery management, who suspended him and contacted the local council, which in turn contacted police.

He was arrested on suspicion of neglect in June 2024, but it was only when investigators began analysing his devices that he was unmasked as a paedophile and sexual predator.

Thousands of images were found on the devices, including harrowing footage that he had taken of himself abusing four young children during nap time at the nursery.

Investigators had to sift through 300 hours of the disturbing material to grade the images and try to identify victims.

In some images he had taken the faces of schoolgirls or women and imposed them on existing obscene photographs.

Police said they were in the process of contacting 10 adult women this week who feature in the mocked-up images.

At the time, it was not illegal for him to make the photographs of adults, but investigators wanted to inform the women who featured.

Chan, a British national who had passed an enhanced criminal records check, worked as a supply teacher in 2006 and 2007, and police are trying to look at his job history before 2006.

While his employment record at the school was said to be unremarkable, parents at the nursery said they had raised concerns about his strange behaviour, and are taking legal action against Bright Horizons.

They have also successfully applied for a review of the police decision not to charge Chan with neglect.

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In December, Chan admitted 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.

Then in January he admitted another 30 charges – 12 counts of taking indecent photographs of children, six charges of outraging public decency, sexual assault on a female, and 11 counts of voyeurism.

During their investigation, police contacted around 700 families whose children attended the since-closed branch of Bright Horizons nursery, and families of around 500 children who attended the school while Chan was working there.

There are potentially two children from the nursery who have not yet been identified, although Chan has been charged with making indecent images of them, as well as a girl who was upskirted and another who he secretly filmed.

Investigators have pledged to continue until they have exhausted every possible line of inquiry in their attempts to identify them.

Mr Basford added: “The investigation team have done their best to identify all those victims that we have identified through the images.

“Unfortunately, the takeaway from this investigation will be the unknown.

“We know what we know because he recorded himself doing these acts, and we know that he has then kept those images of his offending.

“But we also know that he’s worked for many years across these settings, and what we don’t know is the offending that may have occurred where he didn’t digitally record it.

“To the families that have had children go through those establishments, I absolutely appreciate that the unknown is having a massive impact on them, and hurt that they will never really know what happened, and we’ll never really know the level of Chan’s offending.”