Roksana Lecka, who abused babies at two nurseries in the UK, has been living as a free woman since landing back in Poland following a deportation error
A nursery worker who was sentenced to eight years behind bars for abusing 21 babies while on drugs is now living free in her native Poland after serving just 14 months in jail in Britain, authorities have confirmed.
Roksana Lecka, 23, was jailed last September for abusing children aged as young as ten months at two nurseries in west London by pinching, punching and kicking them over a period of seven months. She was deported to Poland in February as part of the Government’s Early Removal Scheme.
But officials in her home country have claimed they did not have the powers to detain her when she landed back in the former Eastern Bloc.
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Major Dagmara Bielec, of the Nadwislanski Border Guard Unit, reportedly told local media: “A Polish citizen expelled from Great Britain has returned to the country, but her arrival did not take place under any of the formal international co-operation procedures in force between Poland and Great Britain.”
According to reports in Poland, Lecka was not entered into the relevant criminal databases or international alert systems in a way that would have allowed officers to detain her. Officials claimed that because there was no official documentation from the UK regarding her expulsion, and no corresponding entries in national or international law-enforcement systems, border guards had to process her under normal entry procedures.
Lecka is understood to have landed in Warsaw on February 5, but her current whereabouts are unknown. Her crimes, which included her kicking a tot in the face repeatedly during nine months of “gratuitous” and “sadistic” violence, took place between 2023 and 2024.
Lecka, who is banned from returning to the UK, was jailed for eight years in September after admitting seven counts of cruelty to a person under the age of 16. She was convicted after a trial of another 14 counts, the Mirror reports.
At her sentencing last year, Judge Sarah Plaschkes KC said Lecka “pinched, slapped, punched, smacked and kicked” children, “pulled their ears, hair and their toes”, and toppled them “headfirst into cots” causing bruising and lingering red marks.
Describing the crimes, she said: “Often the child would be quietly and happily minding its own business before you deliberately inflicted pain, causing the child to cry, arch, try to get away or writhe in distress. Time after time you calmly watched the pain and suffering you have caused. Your criminal conduct can properly be characterised as sadistic.”
Lecka was caught after parents and staff spotted children in her care had been bruised and scratched and police then found CCTV footage of her scratching and pinching children under their clothes, on their arms, legs and stomachs.
Parents of her victims later told a court of their feelings of heartbreak, guilt and distrust and described Lecka as the “worst kind of human”. She attempted to defend her actions, carried out at Riverside Nursery in Twickenham, which is now closed, and Little Munchkins in Hounslow, by claiming she was sleep-deprived and hooked on cannabis and vapes.
At the time of her deportation, it appeared unclear whether Lecka would continue her jail sentence in Poland. But some parents spoke at the time of their horror at media reports she would immediately be allowed to go free in her homeland.
One father whose son was physically abused by Lecka said at the time her deportation after serving just 14 months, which included time on remand, was “completely inappropriate” and “really hard to swallow”.
He told the BBC: “We felt it undermined all that time and emotion that had gone into the trial. Preparing our witness statements and our victim-impact statements, going through the trauma of that whole investigation and trial, to get a sentence brought a sense of closure and we could all move on from it. But then for that sentence not to be served, it was a bit of a hollow feeling.”
The victim’s father claimed there is “too much focus on cost savings, rather than upholding the principles of the system”.
At the time of Lecka’s deportation, Lib Dem MP Munira Wilson told the House of Commons victims’ parents had not been told whether Lecka would continue to serve the rest of her eight-year sentence or go free. She called for information regarding Lecka’s release terms.
After raising the matter in parliament and writing to the Home Office, Wilson was told by ministers that, due to time on remand before her trial, Lecka had become eligible for deportation on 7 October 2025 – less than a fortnight after receiving her eight-year sentence.
Alex Norris, minister for border security and asylum said in a letter to the MP: “Whilst Lecka is not required to serve the remainder of her sentence in Poland, we have made Polish law enforcement aware of her convictions so that appropriate safeguarding actions can be taken by the Polish authorities.”
However, according to reports in Poland, the authorities there are unable to monitor her movements or warn childcare institutions about her past convictions and there are even fears she could find a new job working with children.
Last month, a Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “These were appalling crimes, and our thoughts remain with the victims and their families. This Government is deporting foreign national offenders at pace, with more than 5,000 deported last year – a 14 per cent increase on the previous year.”
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