Safeguard deniers - horrific details - Vincent Chan paedophile

[dick27]

It always blows my mind when people dismiss safeguarding concerns. Horrific reminder of why safeguarding is needed.

https://www.the-londoner.co.uk/abuse-at-a-north-london-nursery-the-disturbing-perplexing-case-of-vincent-chan/

Thanks OP. This is a chilling story and it's right that questions are asked about how he managed to go undected for so long.
There was another case in the courts recently where an 18 year old male nursery worker has been jailed for 10 years for raping two three year olds.

https://www.surrey.police.uk/news/surrey/news/2025/11---november/nursery-worker-jailed-for-sexual-offences-against-two-children/

It makes you wonder if the old ways of 'no men in charge of babies or children' was there for a reason?!

Julie Bindel has just written about this:

https://x.com/bindelj/status/1996282869875150994?t=UEFzxkFG1d4VKpey6JM1tw&s=19

I can't read the paywalled Telegraph piece. I'm interested to see what she has to say on this.

I agree, of all the minimum wage jobs out there why would a man want to work in a nursery, knowing that people will think he’s there for nefarious reasons, even if he’s not. I just don’t get it.

DBs checks aren't fit for purpose, whether enhanced or not. They only check for cautions, convictions or other processes carried out by the police. I don't know how to make it more thorough, but something needs to happen. The trouble is this type of crime and viewing the kind of material he did (and created) isn't given the sentences it should.
The fact that it's referred to as "child pornography" still disgusts me. It's child sexual abuse and rape, not pornography.

https://archive.is/RkMF5

A very good piece as you’d expect.

There's an argument for encouraging people to start "trusting their instincts" again. Not in the sense of "he's a man in child care therefore must be a paedophile" but in the sense of encouraging people to be more sceptical and to understand how boundary crossing with children is a major red flag that must be reported. The abusive filming of children should have been immediately flagged up .

In most of the cases of serial child abuse in institutions / schools there were red flags that were ignored / explained away. Boundaries were crossed, abusers set up excessive secrecy in order to abuse and these weren't challenged. Staff felt unable to challenge those in more powerful positions - and of course children thought they'd not be believed.

My guess is that the review will show that there were patterns of inappropriate behaviour by this senior member of staff and they weren't challenged because there wasn't a culture of openness and transparency.

I can't agree with the "we should keep all men out of spaces where they have access to young children" line.

Most sexual abuse of young children happens at the hands of family members. Are we really suggesting we sequester women and children away from their husbands, fathers etc until the children are grown?

Men make up half the population. There is no realistic scenario where a child is never alone with a man.

Rather than call for unrealistic policies like banning men from working with children (which I would question in any event because of the implication that childcare is women's work), I would rather see increased awareness, training, safeguarding measures, and indeed research into and intervention for men who have these paraphilias to catch and treat them before they harm anyone.

If you are leaving school at 16 looking at college courses then childcare is one of the subjects pushed, especially if you have limited qualifications,

It makes very clear the ill-advised policy of running childcare for profit.

I don't see what running childcare for profit has got to do with it. If anyone is running childcare, paedophiles will try to get involved in that to access children.

A huge part of this case is that the man WAS reported by a colleague for behaviour that raised a question mark (making funny videos of the children, which the man shared with colleagues). The police confiscated his devices and then apparently didn't get round to checking the devices, so that he wasn't arrested for 14 months. 14 months in which he continued to have access to those young children. I've heard before that it can take a very long time for police to check electronic devices - they're presumably just put in a pile somewhere.

In one way, I agree with you, it's 'not all men', and it seems fundamentally unfair and discriminatory to say ' "we should keep all men out of spaces where they have access to young children", the liberal in me objects to that.
The sexual abuse survivor in my thinks - if only...

But as you say, most sexual abuse of children is at the hands of fathers, brothers, uncles, grandads etc, men who have unfettered access to the children they abuse. This is indeed a huge dilemma, and one which, as you say, could only be solved by keeping all men away from vulnerable children, and vulnerable adults for that matter.

The fact that it is still seen as somewhat out of the ordinary for men to want to work with young children implies that society 'gets it' and seeks to minimise the risk to children by surrounding them with carers who belong to the half of adults who are not responsible for 90%+ of sexual abuse of children.

That response is based on emotion but also on statistics. I agree it is difficult to formalise it in a way that is not seen as unfair to men who are not sexual abusers, and who are not counted amongst the shocking number of men who view the sexual abuse of children online:

Surveys found 7% of British men, or 1.8 million, admitted online offending against children at some point, according to the university's Childlight initiative's new global index, Into The Light.
That's the equivalent of filling Wembley Stadium 20 times over.
"This is on a staggering scale that in the UK alone equates to forming a line of male offenders that could stretch all the way from Glasgow to London," Childlight chief executive Paul Stanfield said.
"Child abuse material is so prevalent that files are on average reported to watchdog and policing organisations once every second.
300 million children face sexual abuse online each year, new research suggests | World News | Sky News

The instinct to think that it's just too big a risk, and the potential damage to children is just too traumatic, so let's just have women caring for young children is as understandable as it is problematic, practically and legally.

7% of women make bad financial decisions, therefore we should safeguard against potential damage to the economy by viewing women in accountancy as probable wrong uns. It's just too big a risk not to. /S

I apologise if this is a dumb question

I thought that nursery workers would not be taking video of children for any reason

That seems to me to be a pretty basic safeguard but from reading the article, it seems like Parents want it to be used as a method of keeping in contact and keeping updated.

What is the norm, please? It just seems to me that if you can't take photos at your kids nativity play, then it's odd to be taking videos within a nursery environment.

We don't really know details but I would have thought this is part of the nursery not applying sufficient safeguarding.

I'd personally question the need to have iPads or smartphones in the main nursery. In reception, to keep parents updated if need be, then fine. But one way to remove this particular risk would be to have all smart tech put in a locker, keep a proper desk phone at reception, and if parents want updates they can telephone reception the old fashioned way.

I know what you're saying, but to be honest I'm not really thinking about it from the perspective of whether it's "fair" to men, although I'm sure that's a wider consideration.

My main argument is that a) it's completely unrealistic to keep children separate from half the population, many of whom will be their relatives, b) I think preventative measures and intervention at an early age for these men would keep many more children from harm than arbitrary laws about who can work in a nursery, and c) (a more minor point in this context) I don't want to see a return to the idea that childcare is women's work. We've spent quite a bit of time fighting against that, let's not give fathers an excuse to totally absolve themselves of any parenting.

But 8% of men make bad financial decisions - does that mean we ban all accountants?

My kids have never gone to nursery but my understanding is that they use photos and videos of kids all the time, uploaded to apps that parents have access to. So photographing children in nursery in itself isn’t a red flag, it’s part of keyworker duties.

Bloody hell!

I don't really understand why this is necessary though. Clearly it doesn't prevent children being abused but it does open up the potential for taking photos that shouldn't be taken, and it's only recently been a possibility due to technology. I was in nursery in the 90s and fairly sure both I and my mum were fine with not having daily photos and videos.

Thanks for the replies

Yes, I don't really understand why it would be necessary. I suppose the other way of looking at it is that it did provide a red flag for something that was actually happening. Even if it took the ages to follow up the flag. Which they should've done, even if the suspicion was "only" that he was unkind. Because that's also a red flag.

Equality legislation has shifted the focus of services to equal opportunity for workers.

Nurseries exist to provide the safest possible care for children, not to provide equal opportunities for grown men.

If there was a decision to ban male nursery workers, it's not a hill I'd die on fighting it.

I do think banning men from working with children altogether would be counterproductive though- youth groups, Sunday schools, primary schools (and secondary?). All have seen cases of abuse and none will ever be completely free from risk. But I think it teaches children the wrong message- with consequences both for boys and girls.

Yes the message of 'men are inherently dangerous to women and children', might inspire some boys to be better men. But I think for some boys it breeds an attitude of 'women and children are so inherently tempting they have to be kept away from me. And if they won't keep away I can't be blamed if the temptation overwhelms me'. I think you see this attitude reflected in attitudes to women and girls in countries with a lot of sex-segregation.