Teen nursery worker guilty of string of sex attacks on toddlers
A TEENAGE nursery assistant was yesterday found guilty of a devastating series of sex attacks on toddlers in his care.
His victims’ parents demanded to know how Jayden McCarthy had been allowed to work with young children.
The apprentice was convicted of 13 sex assaults and the rape of a three-year-old girl at a family-run nursery in Torquay, Devon. He was also found guilty on two counts of raping a boy five years ago.
McCarthy, now 18, was caught after one girl told her mother in 2019 that ‘someone has been naughty at nursery’. She was given gingerbread models of a girl and boy by police, which allowed her to indicate the nature of McCarthy’s crime.
Following the examination of 265 hours of CCTV footage, McCarthy was charged, and convicted after a two-week trial at Exeter Crown Court. The jury were then informed by defence barrister Nick Lewin that McCarthy, who grew up in care, had himself been ‘the victim of multiple sex offending as a very young child’.
McCarthy was remanded on bail, with sentencing adjourned while a psychiatric report is prepared.
Judge David Evans told him: ‘You have been found guilty on the clearest possible evidence of grave sexual offences against young and very young children at a time when you yourself were a youth.
‘You face a substantial sentence of custodial detention.’
While McCarthy had passed the necessary Disclosure and Barring
‘Grave sexual offences’
Service checks, the mother of one of his victims told the Mail: ‘Most of the parents will say the same, “He was too young and he wasn’t checked.” Or at least they didn’t go into his past as much as they should have. Why would he want to work with children? Why would they employ him when he had that background?’
McCarthy grew up in squalor in Gloucester before being taken into care at age 12.
As the jury were told after delivering their verdict, McCarthy had himself been abused as a child on multiple occasions Despite this background, his care workers helped the teenager fulfil his ambition to work in a nursery.
Following his terrible crimes, families have been left in limbo, not knowing whether their child was abused. As one father put it: ‘Dates have been mentioned in court as to when he was doing this, but he was at the nursery for four months before the first of those dates. We don’t really know what went on. In some ways we don’t want to know.’
One father whose child was at the nursery said: ‘A lot of parents have been told that their children are not thought to be victims, but they are now worrying about everything their children says and does, and whether it suggests otherwise.’
The nursery’s owner told the Mail: ‘Our insurers have advised that we should not make any comment.’