Top BBC Presenter, Huw Edwards, and his Child Abuse Case.
Huw Edwards pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates Court on Wednesday, 31 July 2024, to 39 charges of child abuse. These are new charges, unrelated to the charges dropped by the police in the summer of 2023.
Seven of the new charges are Category A abuses, which involve penetrative sex. The evidence presented show that some of the victims were aged between 7 and 9 years old.
Twelve are in Category B, non penetrative sex abuse.
Twenty-two charges involve indecent images.
Edwards’ barrister, Philip Evans KC, told the Court, “he didn’t keep the images, he didn’t send them to anyone else. He hasn’t sought any similar images from anywhere else.”
However, under the law, even just opening an image, from WhatsApp or elsewhere, that has been received is illegal. That Edwards did not CREATE the images himself is irrelevant.
Sentencing will take place on 16 September 2024, following reports requested by the magistrate. The maximum custodial sentence in a Magistrates Court is 6 months, in the Crown Court 10 years. Huw Edwards’ defence team will likely plead for him not to be given a prison sentence but to undergo some rehabilitation.
There are some inaccurate and poorly-researched accounts of this case on the internet. The next link has been fact-checked and is correct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-os7P6CXVw
The video shows Edwards surrounded by police and escorted through angry crowds. Some contributors have commented that the BBC has a lot of questions to answer. Why did it not reveal that it knew Edwards had been investigated and arrested in November 2023? They now admit to being aware of the arrest and other in-house complaints from BBC staff.
Some more detail.
Alex Williams (25) has been named as the person sending Edwards the images. Between December 1920 and April 2022, he sent, through a WhatsApp group which Huw Edwards followed, 377 sexual images.
Edwards asked him to stop sending images of under-age children.
The police only found about Edwards’ involvement when they carried out a routine check on Williams’ phone and saw Huw Edwards name in the group chat.
