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A cannabis smoking worker at a £1,900-a-month Montessori nursery who was caught vaping in an infant sleeping room has been jailed for eight years for punching, kicking, throwing and pinching 21 toddlers in her care.
Heartbroken parents tearfully recalled discovering bruises and injuries on their children caused by Roksana Lecka, 22.
In victim impact statements, some spoke of their 'overwhelming guilt' at sending their infants to the Riverside Nursery in Twickenham, southwest London, and failing to protect them.
One father said he and his wife believed that Lecka would have gone on to kill a child had she not been caught.
Judge Sarah Plaschkes KC told Lecka she should be barred from ever working with children or vulnerable people again.
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.
Footage released by the Met Police today showed Lecka was caught on CCTV vaping while in a room with sleeping infants.
And in excerpts from police interviews she sat emotionless and simply repeated: 'No comment.'
At one point she could be seen playing with her hair, prompting a female officer to ask: 'Am I boring you?'
Lecka, who wore a black suit and had her hair tied behind her head during the hearing, did not show any signs of feeling 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.'
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 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.
Detective Inspector Sian Hutchings, the senior investigating officer in the case, said: 'Lecka has) never given any explanation for her behaviour and what she's done, which... has only added to the upset for the parents, who have been immensely strong throughout the criminal investigation and been very dignified in their response.'
Lecka 'was visibly bored' in the police interview, gave no comment answers, 'and didn't appear bothered by the seriousness of the allegations', the detective said.
This shocked and frustrated the lead investigating officers, Ms Hutchings added, and 'only added to the upset being caused to the families because we were unable to provide any explanation to them, who were all left wondering why she has done this.
'She's never shown any remorse or any empathy throughout the trial or the investigation.'
Asked if psychiatric reports revealed any cause to her offending, Ms Hutchings said: 'We've got no insight. We've got nothing that can give us any sort of explanation, through all of our inquiries that have been completed, that would help us understand why she did what she did.'
Lecka did not target specific children, the detective added.
During a police interview, Lecka appeared to be fiddling with her hair while she was asked about a baby 'on a mattress, he seems to be crying'.
The officer paused to say: 'Sorry am I boring you?'
Lecka gave no comment answers, including when another officer put to her: 'You've not told us that you've kicked one of the kids in the face.
'What if there were any serious injuries to that baby that could have caused him more harm down the line? And four weeks later we're here again.
'Haven't you got any empathy for any children, or any of the ones you've assaulted?'
After another no comment answer, the same officer said: 'You've just sat here and gone no comment, so I'm going to go back to each parent and tell them, we spoke to you, she's just sat here emotionless - nothing, nothing at all for these babies.
'These are children, you're effectively abusing children, physically abusing children and you have got nothing but no comment to say and I've just never seen anything like it'.
Babies sustained 'horrific bruising to their bodies' but none of their injuries were life-changing, Ms Hutchings said.
'It's difficult to imagine how difficult it will have been for those parents to have had contact from the police to tell them that their child had been physically abused by the one person who was supposed to keep them safe,' Ms Hutchings added.
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.