How far does the nursery abuse scandal go?

It was the headline that made every parent’s blood run cold. In February, nursery worker Vincent Chan admitted 56 charges including sexual assault by penetration and possession of indecent images of the children in his care at the West Hampstead branch of the American multi-national childcare provider Bright Horizons.

The offences had been filmed over the course of seven years, adding to Chan’s collection of at least 26,000 indecent images, which included clips of children being raped. It was, according to the Metropolitan Police, “one of the most harrowing and complex child sexual abuse investigations” it has ever taken on.

While a Bright Horizons spokesperson called this “an appalling breach of trust by one individual”, a catalogue of safeguarding failures at outposts both in the UK and the US suggest that their issues go beyond one bad apple.

A number of families are now hoping that there will be criminal action taken against the nursery, whose “safeguarding failures created the perfect hunting ground for a predator”, a statement released by their lawyers read.

That includes Sam Gagen*, whose son Hugh*, then three, began describing Chan as “a naughty guy” three years ago.

Hugh had previously adored 45-year-old Chan, whose illustration skills had made him a hit among the young children in his care. But there came a marked shift, Sam says. Hugh was no longer excited to go to nursery and see his friends. One morning, when Sam shouted to his wife at the other end of their flat, their son cowered in the corner saying “‘Daddy, Daddy, please don’t be like Vince.’”

Vincent Chan (Metropolitan Police/PA)

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“I was like, what the f***?” Sam recalls. “Then he said: ‘Vince is mean, Vince hurts people.’”

The Gagens heard of Chan’s crimes via an email from the police. “The first reaction [was] a bit of disbelief, like: ‘Oh my God, how could this happen? Is this true?’ It feels like some television drama that you never imagined you’d ever be involved in,” Sam says. There was anger too, because they had already raised concerns about Chan — whom they considered “weird” — to senior Bright Horizons staff, which were waved away as “just Vince being Vince”. Yet “if anyone was going to do anything to the kids, it would have been him”. Sam and his wife, Cleo*, now believe that Hugh “at very least witnessed violent or sexual abuse,” and “may well have been the victim of some of that [sexual abuse]”.

A Bright Horizons spokesperson said: “First and foremost, our thoughts remain with the children and families affected by Vincent Chan’s crimes... we are truly sorry for the impact it continues to have. We are committed to learning whatever lessons can be taken from this terrible case.”

Issues extend beyond London

Following Chan’s arrest, Ofsted, the government’s education inspectors, announced “an extensive programme of regulatory activity” across Bright Horizons’ 247 UK settings (the West Hampstead branch was closed following Chan’s conviction), with breaches of requirements identified in 69 cases. In an update last month, inspectors said that while “measurable progress” had been made, inspectors had still found “breaches of requirements at 39 settings, including significant weaknesses in safeguarding, leadership and governance”.

Bright Horizons’ spokesperson said that “keeping children safe is our most important responsibility, and one that we expect everyone in the organisation to take equally seriously, from our senior leadership through to every colleague in every nursery”.

Safeguarding issues have afflicted Bright Horizons nurseries beyond London.

Last year, three members of staff at one of the chain’s New York facilities were charged with child endangerment, with offences including hitting toddlers in the head with metal water bottles, taping their mouths to obstruct their airways; spraying a child in the face with cleaning solution, and grabbing one by the hair before dragging her to her feet. Later that same year, a staff member poured cleaning solution into a water pitcher for the children, which at least one consumed. (Bright Horizons claimed that this was an accident caused by the bottle being incorrectly labelled.)

Records obtained by The New York Times found 47 complaints lodged against the company with the New York’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene between 2024-2025, around 40 per cent of which were substantiated. They also found that several staff had not been fully vetted.

In 2019, Bright Horizons was fined £800,000 following failures to adequately train workers at its Edinburgh branch, which contributed to the death of an 11-month-old boy. A few months later a member of staff at its Fulham branch was convicted of assaulting a young child, with CCTV footage showing her repeatedly pushing their head down with a blanket. At a Surrey outpost, a parent says that she had to raise “significant safeguarding concerns... I would never use Bright Horizons again”. There are also legal proceedings under way at one of its nurseries in north London.

Bright Horizons Day Nursery in Fulham

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The question now is whether these cases are indeed outliers, or signs of deeper-rooted systemic dysfunction. And, as a privately owned conglomerate where profit is the goal, how committed Bright Horizons is to fixing it.

The firm, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has more than 1,000 locations across the US, UK, Australia, the Netherlands and India. “They have thousands of shareholders backed by big banks like JP Morgan,” says Sam.

“It’s all about share price, revenue growth and profit. And so how can safeguarding really be in the top five of agenda items for a business of that structure? It’s all about cost-saving and getting more kids in and charging parents more.” Despite extortionate fees across the board — at some Bright Horizons facilities the fees are £168 per day; some have risen 10 per cent since last year — safeguarding failures at nurseries are becoming more common.

Between April 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026, Ofsted suspended 300 early-years providers — a 26 per cent jump on the previous year. In 2022, two children at different nurseries died either from suffocation or “excessive” force when being put to sleep face down and tightly swaddled by the people employed to keep them safe.

Multiple parents of children at Bright Horizons nurseries say that when they tried to raise safeguarding issues to senior staff, they were “fobbed off”.

Cleo rails: “For managers to feel so confident that they could look the other way, and area managers to feel so confident that they could brush aside what is, we now know, hundreds of parents’ complaints over [Chan’s] tenure, what does that tell you about the culture of the organisation?” The leadership at Bright Horizons, she believes, “behaves as if they’re untouchable”.

Hiding behind press releases

When Aynur Ozil* heard about Chan’s convictions earlier this year, she emailed her daughter’s Bright Horizons nursery in Chelsea asking for contact details for senior staff — but “I never received it”. Via the nursery app, parents were told to direct questions to managers in individual branches, but “I was like, why am I talking to my nursery manager about this when you are the one who hired [him]?… It’s just so unfair,” says Ozil, whose daughter attended the nursery for three years.

“They had nothing to do with it. The head office was just never going to answer any of these questions, and wanted to use the nursery managers as a buffer.”

“The least you can expect is that your child’s going to be safe”

Aynur Ozil*

Ozil says that her experience with the nursery until then had been excellent. But “I did not appreciate being sent this corporate press release that was merely published to prevent bad impressions with the public”.

“Its sole focus was to protect the brand as opposed to taking accountability for the systematic failure within the organisation,” she feels. Given what they paid, “the least you can expect is that your child’s going to be safe”.

Lessons appear not to have been learned.

Management there, too, had a culture of blocking questions from concerned parents, says Jade Arnott*, whose son attended the baby room. There, he was given oat milk “for months” despite Arnott having told the nursery he was intolerant to it; he was also sent outside “in the middle of November to do water play with no footwear” when he was unable to walk. “I asked for the outdoor policy and it looked like something that had been quickly thrown together — it was hardly a page long,” she says. Any responses that did come from senior management “just sounded like they were reading a script”.

“They didn’t actually comment on the issues themselves, only that they’d ‘have a word with staff and make sure things are up to date’,” she adds. She ultimately removed her son as “it was just one thing after another, [and] very plain to see that messages weren’t getting passed on at all”.

A spokesperson for Bright Horizons said: “The issues that you have raised are of concern to us. Our parent complaint procedure provides for escalation above nursery level and we would always encourage parents to do so if they remain unsatisfied.”

The wealth of safeguarding issues at nurseries has led to calls for the Department for Education to introduce tighter controls, such as making on-site CCTV mandatory. Earlier this year, Ofsted announced that every early years provider will be inspected by 2030, and then again after four years, reducing the existing inspection window from six years. (Inspections are more frequent when there is cause for concern).

Action is too little, too late

For some parents this is already too little, too late. Sam says that “a couple of the mothers [at their nursery] decided just to stop working and have the kids at home because they were so shocked and distrusting of the industry.

“I mean, if this could happen in a massive chain such as Bright Horizons, it can happen in your independents, right?”

For others, concerns about how the company operates have been enough to put them off for good. A couple who were due to send their one-year-old to an east London branch in April gave up their place after Chan’s conviction.

A still from body-worn video footage of police officers arresting Vincent Chan (Metropolitan Police/PA)

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“All the shocking revelations about the Bright Horizons chain have made us think twice,” they say of the nursery, a former independent taken over by the company earlier this year. While some staff had been there for 20 years “and were doing a brilliant job, knowing it was now going to be overseen by a company with such flawed safeguarding policies is a huge problem for us. There’s nothing more important than our child’s safety, so why take the risk?”

Sam and Cleo are now working with Ofsted and the Department for Education on changes to early-years care to spare other parents from “having to go through this pain” even if it is too late for their family. Making these fundamental shifts is spurring them on, Cleo says. “We do want to make an example of Bright Horizons, and we’re not going to let go.”