PublishedJuly 31, 2024, 1:15 p.m.
United KingdomHuw Edwards admits receiving child pornography
The former BBC star received images on WhatsApp between December 2020 and August 2021 of a child aged between 7 and 9.
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Fabio Dell’Anna
Huw Edwards The prosecution relates to 41 images, some of which relate to a child aged between seven and nine, received on WhatsApp between December 2020 and August 2021.
Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images
Huw Edwards, long the BBC’s most famous journalist and presenter, admitted Wednesday to possessing dozens of child pornography images sent by courier, in a new case that has dented the reputation of Britain’s public broadcaster.
A year after the scandal that led to his removal from the airwaves and three months later his resignation from the BBC, Huw Edwards, 62, appeared in a dark suit and sunglasses at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London, where a crowd of photographers and television cameras awaited him.
During a brief hearing, he soberly answered “guilty” to the reading by Judge Paul Goldspring of the three charges of “making indecent images of children”.
This means that the judge will hand down his sentence at a later date without a trial being held. The journalist, who has been inseparable from the most significant events in the United Kingdom since the early 2000s, risks 10 years in prison.
He remains free under judicial supervision pending a further hearing on September 16.
Huw Edwards presented the 10pm evening news for 20 years before finding himself at the centre of a scandal last summer when he was accused of paying a teenager for sexual photographs and was suspended.
Police said at the time that they had found no evidence that a criminal offence had been committed. But the facts uncovered since then go far beyond the revelations that had the tabloids on tenterhooks last summer.
The prosecution relates to 41 images, some of which concern a child aged between 7 and 9, received on WhatsApp between December 2020 and August 2021.
Olympic Games and Coronation
Huw Edwards has long been one of the BBC’s best-known presenters and its highest-paid journalist, with a salary for 2023/2024 of more than £475,000 (over 560,000 euros).
He presented election nights and it was he who announced to the British the death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8, 2022.
He also provided live commentary on the wedding of Prince William and Kate, the opening of the Olympic Games in 2012 and, more recently, the coronation of Charles III in May 2023.
A practising Christian, Huw Edwards is married with five children.
It emerges from the sequence of events described by the prosecution during the hearing on Wednesday that he was exchanging emails with a man who was sending him hundreds of pornographic images.
The illegal images, “clearly sent with Mr Edwards’ consent”, mainly involved children aged 13 to 15 but some included a child aged seven or nine, said prosecutor Ian Hope.
After receiving a video involving a boy aged between 13 and 15 in August 2021, the journalist asked his interlocutor to stop sending him “illegal” images.
Huw Edwards’ lawyer insisted his client had only received the images, not shared them, and stressed he suffered from “serious” mental and physical health issues.
The former presenter revealed in a documentary in 2021 that he suffered from depression that regularly “bedridden” him. He was hospitalized following last summer’s scandal.
In April, the BBC announced his resignation, decided “on the advice of his doctors”.
Severely criticized for its handling of the scandal, the public company carried out an internal investigation concluding that there were inadequacies in its procedures for handling complaints about the behavior of its employees.
The audiovisual giant remains traumatized by its handling of several sex scandals, first and foremost the Jimmy Savile affair, which broke out in 2012, a year after the death of this star presenter, who had raped and sexually assaulted minors for decades.
