LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP)-A United Kingdom child-care worker who filmed himself sexually abusing youngsters at a nursery and downloaded over 20,000 indecent images of children was described in court Thursday as “every parent’s worst nightmare”.

Vincent Chan, 45, faces a long prison sentence after he admitted a raft of 56 charges including sexual assault.

The case comes as the government considers making CCTV mandatory in nurseries after a string of similar cases.

Chan’s victims included four girls aged three and four who he molested between 2022 and 2024 during naptime at the north London nursery.

Chan, dressed in a prison-issue grey tracksuit, entered the dock at the capital’s Wood Green Crown Court flanked by three guards.

He glanced briefly towards the packed public gallery where the parents of the children he targeted — some fighting back tears — were sitting.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Wednesday said the government was consulting on whether to make CCTV mandatory in nurseries, with multiple cases of abuse in UK child care centres coming to light in recent years.

Chan, whose offences date back to 2011, worked at the London nursery for seven years until being suspended in 2024 when his crimes came to light.

Before being employed at the nursery, Chan worked at a school in north London from 2007-2017 where he was guilty of filming up young girls’ skirts in a classroom and also filming solo sexual acts in the location.

Prosecutor Philip Stott told the court Chan’s offending had undermined trust in nurseries.

He added that it had not only harmed the children he admitted abusing “but also every family who entrusted their children to his care”.

“It is every parent’s worst nightmare. Families can’t put into words the distress caused by receiving such a letter out of the blue” informing them their children might have been involved, he said.

– ‘Dangerous, predatory’ –

Police also discovered films and videos he had secretly taken of girls and women changing or using the toilet.

He also admitted to taking indecent pictures of children in 2024 and 2025, when he was no longer with the nursery or the school.

One woman said that learning he had filmed himself sexually assaulting her as she slept in 2011 had left her feeling “violated”.

“You committed a continuous, daily betrayal that has now reached back through time to poison every memory I once held dear,” she said in a victim impact statement read to the court.

London Met police officer who led the investigation, Lewis Basford, said earlier Chan was a “dangerous and predatory individual”.

“The scale of his abhorrent offending is shocking. 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.”

In a statement after Chan pleaded guilty in January, the families of the victims from the now-closed Bright Horizons nursery in north London said they were “sickened”.

“These further crimes raise deeply troubling questions about how safeguarding systems could have failed so badly that someone who was a prolific and persistent offender was able to secure employment as a nursery worker and offend without intervention for a number of years,” the families said.

According to law firm Leigh Day, which is representing them, 50 families concerned about safeguarding failures at Bright Horizons have joined legal action against the nursery provider, which they accuse of “brushing concerns aside”.

The sentencing comes days after another nursery worker, Nathan Bennett, was found guilty of multiple sexual offences against five boys aged two and three — including rape and sexual assault — by a court in Bristol, southwest England.