There are two very different faces to Roksana Lecka. Photos posted by her family on social media portray her as a loving, caring young woman who helped raise her siblings, bottle-feeding and helping to potty-train them.
‘I am a proud mother to have such a wonderful person as you are Roksana,’ her mum wrote alongside images posted on TikTok, published here for the first time. ‘Thank you for being a wonderful second mummy to my children.’
In the pictures the 22-year-old snuggles up to a baby and dances and plays with a toddler – the perfect big sister, in other words.
But the real Roksana could not be more different.
Having worked as a pub barmaid and been sacked from a beauty salon, she decided to try her hand at looking after other people’s children.
And so it was that last year the unqualified Lecka, who came to the UK from Poland aged three, ended up working in a high-end nursery in a well-heeled suburb of south-west London.
Charging up to £1,900 a month – or nearly £23,000 a year – the Riverside Nursery at Twickenham Green, London, promised parents ‘a bespoke and individualised education, delivered with nurturing, loving care’.
‘We provide the best start for your child,’ it boasted.
Roksana Lecka came to the UK from Poland at the age of three and worked in a pub and a beauty salon before switching to child care
Photos posted by her family on social media portray her as a loving, caring young woman who helped raise her siblings
Lecka was found guilty of 21 counts of child cruelty at Kingston Crown Court last Monday
Instead, thanks to their young employee, the opposite could be said to be true. Because in the five months that she worked there, Lecka relentlessly assaulted 20 helpless children in her care.
She pinched and scratched the legs, stomachs and even ears of children aged between eight months and two years old. Some were targeted multiple times in the same day. Others were kicked, hit, pushed and shoved.
CCTV footage showed Lecka checking the whereabouts of other staff before carrying out her assaults. Those children that were able would try to run or crawl away; others burst into tears when they saw her.
Parents of more than half the children affected are now suing Dukes Education, which runs more than 50 independent schools, colleges and nurseries in the UK. The nursery has since closed.
Some spoke to The Mail on Sunday of their amazement that the abuse was not picked up earlier.
‘I’m horrified at what she has done but I’m just as angry at the nursery and how all this was managed,’ said one parent, who asked not to be named.
‘You expect nursery providers to keep your kids safe – that is fundamental. Given this incident and the sheer scale of it, you wonder how it could go on, on such a wide scale and particularly with parents raising concerns.
‘We will never forget the horror we felt when we learned what our child had been put through.’
The Riverside Nursery at Twickenham Green, London, promised parents ‘a bespoke and individualised education, delivered with nurturing, loving care’ and charged up to £1,900 a month – or nearly £23,000 a year
Bodycam footage from June last year as police questioned Lecka about her campaign of child abuse
Lecka said her addiction to vaping and cannabis influenced her horrific behaviour
A second added that ‘evil’ Lecka had destroyed her trust: ‘My child is now in another nursery because I have to work,’ she said. ‘And I have become one of those mothers who takes pictures of everything. Scratches, anything.
‘If you see your child upset, you immediately think someone is hurting them. It has created a sense of mistrust.’
Concerns were first raised by parents in March 2024 after they spotted strange marks and bruises on their children. Some were so worried that they took photographs of the injuries.
But when they informed the nursery they were assured that nothing untoward was going on.
At no stage, apparently, did Lecka fall under suspicion. Indeed, in late May or early June the nursery’s head presented her with a bouquet of pink roses in recognition of her work.
But just weeks later she was caught in the act by a fellow member of staff. When CCTV was reviewed, multiple instances of abuse were found on that day alone. A search over the previous weeks found more. Added to that were the cases documented in the photos.
Following a month-long trial, last week Lecka was found guilty of child cruelty involving 21 toddlers. All were from Twickenham except one whom Lecka had assaulted while briefly working as a temp at another nursery. After her arrest a staff member contacted police about the incident she had also witnessed.
In court, Lecka, who kept a vape in her bra and would use it next to the babies she was caring for, claimed she was sleep-deprived from hanging out with her boyfriend and smoking cannabis. ‘I can’t remember the things I was doing because I was smoking cannabis that was affecting my memory,’ she said.
Meanwhile, lawyer Jemma Till, from Irwin Mitchell, who is leading the civil action, fears there could be more victims.
‘I feel strongly that there were more incidents of abuse that weren’t captured on CCTV,’ she said. ‘My worry is, given the nature of the concerns being raised back in March, I think there were things happening months before.’
Located in a spacious red-brick Victorian building overlooking Twickenham Green, the Riverside Nursery promised hard-working parents a childcare solution that was a cut above the rest.
A 2022 Ofsted report showed what parents could expect in return for its above-average fees. As well as ‘kind and approachable’ staff, there were activities to teach even the tiniest children new skills. ‘For example, babies strengthen their finger muscles as they investigate malleable materials such as dough and shredded paper,’ recorded the report.
Also praised were healthy snacks, the use of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and the chance to celebrate diverse cultural and religious events such as Diwali and St Patrick’s Day.
But of course the main thing parents want when choosing childcare is to know their offspring are safe – especially when they are too young to communicate if something is wrong.
‘Most parents at the nursery were successful professionals in a wide range of industries,’ the parent of one victim told the MoS. ‘They are the sort of people who take things like nursery selection seriously and do proper due diligence – like we felt we had done.
‘It had a good reputation. Others in the area had also sent their kids there and it had good reviews, no warning signs at all, so we felt like we were in the best hands. And, initially, there were no concerns.’
But that all changed after Lecka joined the nursery in January last year. Born in Poland, she and her parents moved to Britain when she was a toddler, settling in Hounslow where her father worked as a kitchen porter. The couple separated when Lecka was a teenager. She left school with a handful of GCSEs before taking a beauty course at a local college.
Work in a pub followed and at a beauty clinic, where she operated a laser hair-removal machine. But she lost her job after missing work to visit her boyfriend in Liverpool.
Neighbours of the family told the MoS that it was around this time that Lecka’s behaviour changed.
‘She used to be friendly,’ said a neighbour. ‘But something happened. She was smoking cannabis. She became more distant and never spoke.’ Encouraged by her mother to find employment, she started looking for childcare posts, enrolling with an agency. In her evidence she told how much she had enjoyed looking after her brother and sister, who are now aged five and 15.
‘They mean everything to me,’ she told Kingston Crown Court. ‘I grew up with them. We have an inseparable bond. I see them as I would my own children.’
With no childcare qualifications, she started shift work. Then, in January 2024, she successfully applied for a permanent job at the Riverside Nursery at Twickenham Green, providing three references – one from a nursery she had worked at and two from families for whom she had babysat. There were no concerns raised by any of her referees and sources at the nursery confirmed that she had passed all checks, including a DBS check, which assesses an applicant’s criminal history.
But within weeks of her starting, parents noticed strange marks and bruises on their children.
‘As a parent you are aware of what looks normal – for example, grazes to the knee – and what doesn’t, and we began to get concerned when there was a definite increase in unusual injuries to our child,’ said one parent.
Some were so alarmed by what they saw that they photographed the injuries and showed them to the nursery. But they were told that CCTV had been checked and no identifiable cause for the marks could be found.
All that changed on June 28 when Lecka arrived late for work, looking ‘dazed’ and ‘lethargic’. During the day a teaching assistant became concerned after seeing her interact with a number of children who then became distressed. Staff checked all the babies for injuries, finding five with ‘scratches’, ‘pinch marks’, ‘red skin’ and ‘raised skin’.
The headteacher reviewed CCTV and found footage of a child spitting their dummy out and crying after being pinched. Another clip showed Lecka grabbing a child’s face, leaving him in tears.
The matter was reported to the local authority and police were called, and Lecka was arrested on suspicion of child cruelty.
Police then extended their investigations, trawling through CCTV stored from the previous month. In total, they identified 23 babies who appeared to have been mistreated by Lecka. A 24th child had also been harmed in October 2023 at her former place of work.
Most of the alleged incidents took place in the Twickenham nursery’s ‘baby room’, while some occurred in the ‘baby sleep room’ where children were placed in cots or on baby mats.
The jury was shown CCTV footage of Lecka looking around her to check that other staff members couldn’t see what she was about to do.
The court also heard from expert witness Dr Stephen Rose, a consultant pediatrician, who studied the CCTV and photographs submitted by parents. He said that wounds including bruised earlobes, torsos and thighs must have been caused deliberately.
Many of the children’s parents attended the trial, some weeping in the public gallery as they watched the footage.
Giving evidence, Lecka, who had pleaded guilty to seven counts of child cruelty before the start of the trial, explained away each sickening act of violence with a chilling nonchalance.
She claimed that a violent pinch to a boy’s stomach was simply a tender hug. A rough yank on another boy’s hair was a ‘ruffle with my fingers’.
She also sought to rationalise her behaviour with excuses, including that she would get ‘moody’ if she could not smoke her vape at work, did not have enough sleep, was feeling the effects of cannabis smoked the night before or had been suffering from period cramps.
Lecka has admitted she was hooked on cannabis and vapes and was staying up until 3am with her boyfriend. ‘I was addicted to smoking weed and I was addicted to him,’ she told jurors.
Parents have since questioned how she was allowed to vape while working – and how staff did not spot signs of her cannabis use. No reports of such behaviour were made to management by her colleagues.
Last week, Lecka was found guilty of 14 counts of child cruelty, in addition to the seven she had previously admitted. She was acquitted on three counts and will be sentenced in September.
Speaking afterwards, senior crown prosecutor Gemma Burns said that Lecka had shown ‘exceptional cruelty’, adding: ‘No parent should have to fear leaving their child in the care of professionals, but the sheer scale of her abuse is staggering.’
A spokesperson for the Twickenham Green nursery said: ‘Situations like this are deeply upsetting and represent a profound breach of trust in a professional.
‘We recognise how difficult this has been, in particular for the children and families directly involved. Creating places in which children are happy, safe and able to thrive is our top priority, and we will do everything in our power to protect that.’
Asked if the nursery could have done more, sooner, to identify the abuse, he added: ‘While CCTV is not a requirement in nursery settings, at Twickenham Green we had CCTV in place, going above and beyond statutory requirements. Ultimately, this has proved to be vital evidence in the criminal case against Roksana Lecka.
‘As we heard in evidence during the trial, Lecka continually tried to deceive colleagues, conceal her actions and tried to evade the safeguarding processes and protections in place.
‘No concerns were raised by other members of staff about Lecka’s behaviour prior to June 28. When concerns were raised about her behaviour, these were acted upon immediately and ultimately led to her arrest and criminal charges being brought against her.’
Throughout the trial, Lecka was supported in court by her mother, Magdalena.
Approached by the MoS at her home, she said that the case had come as a ‘big shock’. ‘She’s not that bad,’ she said of her daughter. ‘It’s not that bad. She didn’t kill anyone.’
Words that will bring no consolation to the angry, traumatised parents of Lecka’s multitude of vulnerable victims.
