'You can expect a custodial sentence' judge tells nursery worker who abused children

A former nursery apprentice was today found guilty of abusing young children at a nursery in Torquay.

Jayden McCarthy, who was 17 at the time of the offences, was accused of abusing nine children and today told to expect a jail term when he's sentenced in July.

The offences only came to light after one of the young children went home and told their parents.

Police then searched more than 250 hours of CCTV at the nursery, which is now closed.

Exeter Crown Court has heard there were no safeguarding concerns about McCarthy until a girl who attended the nursery reported to her parents that he had raped her.

Lindsay Nelson, a safeguarding lead at the site, told jurors she was informed an allegation had been made and suspended McCarthy “there and then”.

She said: “I made it very clear that I wasn’t making any judgment on him but given the severity of what the allegation was, the only course of action was to suspend at that moment.

“He appeared quite shocked at the allegation that had been posed to him. He seemed dumbstruck, that’s probably the word I would use.

“I was concerned for his welfare at that moment as well, whether he was able to take on board everything that had been said to him, that he understood the process and what was going to happen.”

Miss Nelson said she offered to speak to the people McCarthy was living with but he did not want her to. She then escorted him from the premises.

The nursery received a phone call from the mother of the girl McCarthy is accused of raping shortly after she made the allegation.

Pamela Nelson, the manager of the nursery, told jurors she answered the call.

“You don’t expect a phone call like that, nothing prepares you for a phone call like that. It was very surreal,” Mrs Nelson said.

She transferred the phone call to another member of staff, adding: “I think she was as shocked as I was.”

David McHenry, a safeguarding lead at the nursery, was told of the allegation and went to speak to McCarthy about it, which Lindsay Nelson said “wasn’t ideal”.

When asked why, Miss Nelson told the court: “It wasn’t part of our safeguarding policy to have divulged the details. It was a mistake. David was aware of that afterwards.”

After McCarthy was suspended, Mr McHenry wrote up the account the teenager had given him – denying any wrongdoing – from notes he had made.

Miss Nelson phoned the girl’s mother to assure her the nursery was “taking things seriously” and was told she was on her way there with the girl’s father.

The girl’s parents arrived and were “very upset”, Miss Nelson told the jury. They left after being shown the toilet area, where the rape is alleged to have taken place.

The parents contacted police a short time later to report what their daughter had disclosed.

Miss Nelson described receiving a phone call from a police officer that evening.

“We had tried to get through on a non-emergency police number but while we were trying to get through, they called anyway,” she said.

The court heard McCarthy took the girl into the toilet area of the nursery to change her clothing as she had been playing in water.

Staff went to check on McCarthy after noticing that he had been in the toilet with the girl for longer than expected and he told them he was struggling to put her dress on.

McCarthy successfully applied for a job at the nursery as an apprentice assistant in early 2019, providing references and a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.

During the course of his employment, he underwent further training, including on safeguarding children.

An investigation into McCarthy was launched after the girl’s allegation of rape was reported to police.

There was no CCTV footage of the incident but police officers examined 250 hours of recordings from the site.

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