UK nursery worker admits total of 56 counts of child sex abuse

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - A paedophile nursery worker facing years in prison for molesting four girls aged three and four appeared in a London court on Thursday to admit dozens of new child sexual abuse charges.

Appearing at Highbury Magistrates' Court via videolink from jail, Vincent Chan, 45, admitted a further 30 offences, including filming up young girls' skirts in a classroom. He has now pleaded guilty to a total of 56 charges.

The new charges ranged from one count of sexual assault to multiple counts of voyeurism, taking indecent images of children and committing acts of outraging public decency, according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

The indecent image counts cover 31 still images and 13 moving images, with 15 of the still images depicting the most serious type of sexual abuse, it said.

Chan will be sentenced on February 12 at Wood Green Crown Court.

He had already pleaded guilty last month to 26 child sexual abuse offences committed when he worked at a nursery in northwest London, with the sexual assaults happening between 2022 and 2024.

He filmed himself carrying out the abuse against the four girls during naptime at the nursery, while also taking indecent images of a fifth girl.

He also confessed at the time to downloading more than 26,000 indecent images of children, with nearly 1,500 of those in the most serious category.

The charges he admitted in December included sexual assault of a child by penetration, sexual assault of a child, taking indecent images of children, and making indecent images of children.

Helen Reddy from the CPS said she welcomed Chan's decision to admit the additional offences and avoid the need for a trial.

"Crimes against children are particularly distressing and clearly the aggravating feature of his offending was that Chan was in a position of trust," she said in a statement.

"It is hoped that thanks to the excellent work of the CPS and the police, he will receive a lengthy sentence for all his offending and will no longer be a risk to children."