Twickenham Montessori worker convicted of assaulting 21 toddlers; sentencing due

A 22-year-old caregiver at Riverside Montessori in Twickenham was found guilty of assaulting 21 infants in her care, prosecutors said, with the offences spanning from January 31 to June 28 last year. Jurors accepted that Roksana Lecka, a Polish national who moved to the United Kingdom with her family years earlier, assaulted toddlers aged 18 months to two years old during her eight months at the southwest London nursery, which charged about £1,900 a month for enrollment. The verdicts came after detectives reviewed roughly 300 hours of CCTV footage that laid bare the scale of the abuse.

The case emerged after parents began reporting unexplained injuries on their children and repeatedly photographed bruises and marks. Managers at Riverside Montessori initially failed to identify Lecka as the suspected abuser, allowing her to continue caring for children under two until staff raised concerns on June 28 of the previous year and she was arrested. Lecka was later convicted of assaulting 21 toddlers, with prosecutors detailing how she repeatedly kicked a boy in the face and punched a girl in the side. She had denied 17 counts of child cruelty but admitted seven similar offences; jurors found her guilty of 14 other counts, acquitting her on three.

During the trial, Lecka told jurors she could not remember much because she had smoked cannabis the night before, saying she was addicted to vaping and would become moody if she could not use her device at work. Her evidence described a chaotic environment at the Riverside Nursery, which is part of the Dukes Education network of schools. Investigators trawled 300 hours of CCTV footage to demonstrate the breadth of the harm observed by staff, parents, and investigators. The nursery has since closed.

Impact statements from parents reflected profound distress. One father, who works in safeguarding, said he could not understand how Lecka “slipped through the net” and described the potential risk of further harm had she been left unchecked: “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. “I remember exactly where I was when I received the call about my son,” she recalled, describing how she collapsed at her desk. She said her son had always been a toddler who now wakes with bruises and fears adults. “He no longer closes his eyes without me being there. And he will not go to sleep unless he knows I am there.” She added that her child still pinches her face, a behavior she fears may have been learned from Lecka.

Another parent spoke of constant nightmares and waking thoughts after watching footage of the abuse. “Seeing the footage of Roksana Lecka picking out children and then assaulting them again and again was just horrifying,” one mother said. “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.” A third mother described the heartbreak of watching her infant suffer, noting that the harm inflicted on her child and the other babies had left families overwhelmed with grief.

The court heard that Lecka, who remained emotionless for much of the trial, eventually sobbed when a father suggested she could have killed a child if circumstances had been different. The judge granted her a break after this moment as part of the proceedings. Lecka’s sentencing was scheduled for later that afternoon, with prosecutors seeking a custodial sentence given the severity and scale of the abuse.

The Riverside Montessori case underscores long-standing concerns about safeguarding in some private early education settings. Dukes Education, the umbrella group for Riverside, described the incident as a stark deviation from the standards expected of its institutions. In the wake of the case, authorities reiterated the importance of vigilant safeguarding measures, comprehensive staff vetting, and robust monitoring to prevent similar tragedies in the future.

As families process the impact on their once-trusted caregiving environment, local officials said they would review licensing and oversight processes for private early education centers to ensure that children remain safe and that early warning signs are detected promptly. The sentencing of Lecka will provide the next formal step in a case that has unsettled parents across the neighborhood and raised questions about how such abuse could occur within a high-end nursery setting.