Abuse at a north London nursery: The disturbing, perplexing case of Vincent Chan

It began with a single complaint. In May 2024, a colleague made a report to Camden council about the conduct of Vincent Chan, a worker at a nursery on Finchley Road in West Hampstead run by Bright Horizons, one of London’s biggest early years operators. According to the colleague, Chan had been using work iPads to film mocking videos of the children in the nursery and sharing them with his colleagues.

In the months that followed, the police dug into what they initially thought was a case of child cruelty. Eventually, they discovered evidence that he had been sexually abusing multiple children under his care. The Met have called it one of the most harrowing and complex child sexual abuse investigations the force has undertaken. It's also one that raises questions about their own performance.

This morning, Chan pled guilty to 26 charges related to the sexual assault of multiple children and the making and taking of indecent images of those children. The majority of the offences took place on the grounds of the nursery he worked in and many were documented using nursery-issued devices.

We’ve been digging into the case for the past few weeks, after first receiving a tip about letters being sent to local families by the police. We spoke to local community figures, police detectives and lawyers representing the families, all to try to understand how Chan was able to commit these crimes undetected for such a prolonged period. We’ve also examined the inspection reports of dozens of other nurseries operated by the multi-billion-pound Bright Horizons chain in London and found a pattern of safeguarding failures. 

The leading human rights law firm Leigh Day has now been instructed by the families whose children were targeted by Chan to represent them in a civil action they plan to take against Bright Horizons.

The two arrests 

In a case like this, there’s no way to conceal the horror of what happened. The rest of this article contains details some readers may find distressing.

Vincent Chan first started working at the Bright Horizons nursery in 2017, when he was in his late thirties. He had no criminal record and passed all background checks needed to work in an education setting. He was quickly promoted to the role of nursery nurse, a position he held for most of the ensuing seven years he spent working at the company. It was a role that left him responsible, among other things, for cleaning and clothing the children, aged between two and four years old.

In May 2024, a fellow staff member reported Chan to the nursery and Camden council, over concerns about strange videos of children at the nursery he was making using a work-issued iPad, to which he then added graphics and music. He then shared stills of this supposedly comedic footage with his colleagues. 

Chan was arrested on suspicion of child cruelty in June 2024, and the police subsequently confiscated 25 digital devices from his home and workplace. After his arrest, he was suspended from the nursery.

What happened next is curious. The Met’s statement today says that forensic teams “trawled through the devices, where they uncovered substantial amounts of indecent images and videos of children, including evidence of contact sexual offences against children.” But it was only on 8 September this year — 14 months after his initial arrest — that Chan was arrested again and charged with child sexual offences.