Heartbroken parents of toddlers punched, kicked and pinched at a £1,900-a-month nursery by a worker have described their attacker as ‘the worst type of human.’
Cannabis-smoking Roksana Lecka, 22, will be sentenced today for attacking 21 infants as young as ten months at the Riverside Montessori nursery in Twickenham, southwest London.
Mothers and fathers tearfully said they felt ‘overwhelming guilt’ for sending their children to the nursery and failing to realise they had been attacked.
One father to a young boy assaulted by Lecka said he believed she would have gone on to kill a child had she not been caught.
Multiple parents said their children remained terrified of adults and continued to pinch their faces – behaviour they fear was learned from their attacker.
And one single mother has moved her family away from the area because she could no longer bear to walk past the Riverside Montessori nursery where her son was abused.
Lecka had tried to justify her behaviour by claiming she was sleep deprived from smoking cannabis all night with her boyfriend, but she was convicted of child cruelty in June.
Horrified parents began photographing and reporting unexplained injuries on their children’s bodies in March last year.
But managers at the nursery failed to identify Lecka as the culprit and she continued to care for children under two until staff finally became suspicious on June 28 last year and she was arrested.
Roksana Lecka was found guilty of assaulting 21 toddlers in her care at a Montessori nursery
The 22-year-old told her trial she was ‘addicted’ to vaping and would be ‘moody’ if she wasn’t able to puff on the device during work
Roksana Lecka was convicted of ‘badly harming’ 23 of the infants, all aged 18 months to two years, at a £1,900-a-month Montessori nursery in Twickenham, south-west London
Lecka, who wore a black suit and had her hair tied behind her head during the hearing, remained emotionless while parents spoke of their agony.
But when one father said he believed she was capable of killing a child, she began sobbing and was granted a break by the judge.
The father said: ‘As someone who works in safeguarding children, I find the fact that Roksana slipped through the net and was allowed to work with children absolutely criminal.
‘My wife believes that if she had not been caught she could have gone on to seriously injure or even kill by dropping babies into cots on their heads and kicking them.’
A mother described the moment a police officer rang to tell her that her son had been attacked by a member of nursery staff.
‘I remember exactly where I was when I received the call about my son,’ she said. ‘I was working at my desk and just collapsed when he told me about what had happened to him.
‘The officer asked if he every came home with bruises or injuries, and I said yes all the time because he is a toddler.
‘I then thought back to the bruises he had on his ear that I had photographed previously.
‘In order to have produced those bruises Roksana must have pinched so hard. ‘I cannot get over the fact that an adult would want to do this to a child.
‘He no longer closes his eyes without me being there. And he will not go to sleep unless he knows I am there. Because of this he now sleeps in my bed.
‘He still to this day pinches my face and I wonder if this is because this is what Roksana did to him. ‘I have constant nightmares and wake up thinking they are real.’
The 22-year-old denied 17 counts of child cruelty, but admitted seven similar offences, while working at the Riverside Nursery (pictured) between January 31 and June 28 last year
Parents sat through hours of footage of Lecka abusing children during her trial. In a victim impact statement, one mother said: ‘Seeing the footage of Roksana Lecka picking out children and then assaulting them again and again was just horrifying.’
Another added: ‘Throughout the entire trial I don’t believe she showed any compassion or remorse for what she did.
‘I will never be able to feel fully confident leaving my child in a setting like this again and I hate that she has done this.
‘I feel even more guilty than the person who did this to my child.’
Another mother said: ‘The harm she has inflicted on my son and the babies in her care has left us heartbroken.
‘When he wakes up screaming at night it’s hard to tell if it’s because of what she did or just a general feeling of being unsafe.
‘I replay it in my mind and now I have seen the footage of him being assaulted and the other babies I struggle to get the faces of these babies screaming out in pain out of my head.
‘They replay in my head constantly.
‘Although she has shown no remorse we bear a lot of guilt for what happened. ‘As a mum who carried him, nurtured him and will care for him forever I am utterly heartbroken by what she inflicted.’
Lecka, who is from Poland but moved to the UK with her parents when she was younger, was caught on CCTV kicking a boy in the face and punching a girl in the side
Lecka tried to justify her behaviour by claiming she was sleep deprived from smoking cannabis all night with her boyfriend
Lecka admitted seven counts of child cruelty, including kicking a boy in the face and punching a girl in the side. Lecka denied 17 other similar charges but jurors found her guilty of 14, acquitting her on three counts.
The Polish national, from Hounslow, west London, told the trial: ‘I can’t remember the things I was doing because I was smoking cannabis that was affecting my memory.’
Detectives trawled through 300 hours of CCTV footage which laid bare the scale of Lecka’s violence against toddlers and babies.
Lecka was seen on CCTV repeatedly kicking a boy in the face
The former beauty worker 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 and had been suffering from period cramps.
Her evidence was damning of the chaotic environment at the now-closed Riverside Nursery, part of a prestigious group of educational institutions run by Dukes Education. Lecka will be sentenced later this afternoon.
