'Our children were sitting ducks': Parents demand change as ex-nursery worker gets jail for sex abuse

They still see his face.

It's on the front of their daughter's nursery school folder.

It should be a catalogue of happy memories of their little girl's early years.

But her "key person" at the nursery, the carer they trusted, was serial sex offender Vincent Chan.

"He wrote the words for a large chunk of what is inside (the folder)," the girl's mother said.

"It just demonstrates how much is tainted by what he's done."

Chan was sentenced to a minimum of 18 years.

He pleaded guilty to 56 sexual offences - including more than 30 against children - and is one of the UK's worst sex offenders. He abused the trust placed in him both in a pre-school nursery and, before that, at a primary school.

One thousand two hundred families have been alerted by the police and told that their children may have been in contact with the serial offender at either the school or the nursery.

We cannot identify the parents who have spoken to Sky News, but they wanted to address the safeguarding failures that they say must lead to widespread change across nurseries all over the country.

Their daughter was a year old when she started at the Bright Horizons nursery on Finchley Road in north London.

"She was there till she started school," her mother said.

"We specifically chose a Bright Horizons nursery because we believed that it was an organisation that would educate our daughter, provide her with enriching opportunities, as well as being a childcare function.

"He was an art teacher, so he would do lots of kind of artistic activities with our children.

"I never got the impression she was kind of scared of him or really disliked him.

"He (Chan) was responsible for every element of her care when he was there - settling her to sleep during nap time, her intimate care and going to the toilet and meal times.

"Comforting her when she was upset…knowing that those moments of vulnerability for her were looked over by this kind of predator.

"I feel like the innocence of her childhood is stolen."

They had no idea about Chan's offending until the Met Police visited them last October.

Her father described the "complete shock" they felt learning their daughter was part of the investigation into depraved sexual abuse at the nursery.

The mother said: "They told us that her teacher, Vincent Chan, had at that point been arrested for allegations of child sex abuse.

"On his devices, they found a whole lot of images of our daughter, which were described to us as being very disturbing in nature, taken over an extended period of time.

"As a result, they considered her to be extremely high risk of also having been sexually abused."

Police officers have been unable to say definitively whether their daughter was or was not abused by Chan - a position so many other parents find themselves in.

"It kind of feels like psychologically corrosive to continually go through the worst-case scenario. I feel completely let down," her exasperated mother said.

"The fact that an existing offender was hired, with rooms full of pre-verbal children who were just literally sitting ducks behind closed doors with a sexual predator."

The girl's father asked: "What danger was our child exposed to? And whose fault was it, beyond just an individual?

"Who else is responsible for the failings that allowed those acts to be carried out? It's a real sense of despair.

"For us making a decision that millions of parents make every day, right? To leave their children in the care of others.

"Some of us go to the extra step of doing it in the care of these professional organisations who have, on the surface, checks and balances and regulations to comply with, but this individual was so easily able to manipulate that system."

Solicitors acting for scores of families confirmed to Sky News that some families had raised concerns about Vincent Chan's behaviour at the nursery and allege that those complaints were not dealt with appropriately.

Many of the families affected are demanding further accountability and changes within nurseries.

"I consider Bright Horizons responsible alongside Vincent Chan," the girl's mother said. "I would like to see a prosecution brought by the local authority.

"From a government perspective they've just got to make the system more robust and that's inevitably going to become more expensive - they're going to have to find solutions for that but I don't think we have a choice."

Their daughter is now of primary school age.

"One day we will have an adult daughter who will have access to all of the information about this case online and she remembers the nursery she went to and will have questions for us.

"We will explain to her what the uncertainties are in relation to what happened to her and what the level of risk was that she was exposed to.

"I want to be able to tell her that I did absolutely everything possible to bring some level of justice for her," the mother added.

Bright Horizons has been contacted for comment.

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