Teaching assistant confesses to sexually abusing 20 kids at Helmond school

Former teacher assistant Wesley W. (26) confessed in court to sexually abusing children at the Mondomijn primary school in Helmond, where he worked, and at the homes of children he was babysitting. The man is suspected of sexually abusing 20 young children.

The police arrested W. in September last year, shortly after the primary school suspended him for inappropriate behavior with pupils. He is standing trial in the court in Den Bosch on Thursday. Omroep Brabant is reporting live from the courtroom.

According to the Public Prosecution Service (OM), W. penetrated at least six girls with his finger. He allegedly touched the vaginas and buttocks of 11 girls, made young children touch their genitals, and forced four girls to touch his genitals. The man also forced a brother and a sister to molest each other on multiple occassions. He filmed a lot of the abuse.

W.’s victims are mostly girls between 6 and 10 years old. One victim was very young when the abuse took place. The prosecutor did not reveal her age, but she was still in diapers. He abused many of the children multiple times, some over 20 times. At least one victim suffered his abuse for over a year. He made the children keep the abuse secret.

The abuse happened between 2018 and 2024 at the Mondomijn primary school in Helmond, where he worked as a teacher’s assistant and tutored young children in mathematics. He also worked as a babysitter for multiple families and abused the children in their homes.

The man confessed in court. He said he deeply regrets his actions. “I think it’s terrible that I let it get this far,” he said. He said he’d been “carrying this problem around for a long time, which isn’t nice.” When he was finally caught, after one of the young children summoned enough courage to go to her parents, his world fell apart, the man said. “You’ve been dealing with something like this for so long. You don't know how to react in panic,” W. said when the judge asked him why he initially denied the abuse. “How could I have let it get this far… You go into a kind of defense mechanism.”

The case left Helmond residents horrified. W. was no stranger in the neighborhood. He managed a foundation that organized rides in cool cars for children with disabilities, coached a children’s football team, and was active in the children’s holiday club. “You don’t expect that from someone like that,” a local said a few months after W.’s arrest, when more details of the case became known.