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September 16, 2024 - 1:50pm
Former BBC News presenter Huw Edwards was today handed a six-month suspended prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to accessing indecent images of children.
Many people will rightly feel outraged by the leniency of Edwards’s sentence. That is partly because of the severity of his crimes — two of the Category A images he was sent showed children aged between seven and nine — and partly because the viewing public placed their trust in him, and now feel betrayed by his facade of sober authority and moral integrity.
The defence insisted that key mitigating factors were Edwards’s lack of prior convictions and history of mental health problems, supposedly exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and alcohol use. The prosecution rebutted that key aggravating factors were that some of the images were “moving images”, and that Edwards clearly knew what he was looking at, given that some of the file names included ages such as “13-year-old”. Meanwhile, the police were only able to recover WhatsApp messages, but Edwards communicated over other platforms too.
Despite what some may assume, the former newsreader’s suspended sentence has nothing to do with his former fame or position: in fact, eight out of 10 people in the UK caught with images of children being sexually abused avoid going to jail. Alexander Williams, the man who sent Edwards the indecent images, also received a suspended sentence earlier this year.
Edwards’s sentencing is therefore unfortunately the norm rather than an anomaly. Roger Spackman, a former Labour councillor who worked in a children’s home and was later caught with over a million images of child sex abuse, was only given a suspended sentence of two years. Suspended sentences were also given to a 57-year-old RAF veteran who was caught trying to meet a 14-year-old girl for sex in an online sting operation; a 45-year-old “family man” who not only possessed child abuse images but boasted online about his sexual interest in young girls and that he was going to “try” a 10-year-old girl on holiday in Spain; and a grooming gang member who repeatedly had sex with a 15-year-old girl.
Another convicted child rapist also recently escaped jail because of the overcrowding crisis in Britain’s prisons. He was ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register and notify police if he went on holiday, but in May he jetted off to Egypt without informing authorities. He is still managing to avoid prison.
Some may contend that the legal definition of “making” an image might make Edwards’s crimes seem worse than they actually are. Here, “making” is used to mean possession, which could refer to downloading an image rather than “creating” it in the traditional sense. Regardless, the fact that you can go to prison for three years for a retweet but escape jail time despite sharing the most despicable forms of child abuse suggests that there is something fundamentally wrong with our justice system.
A suspended sentence is no deterrent, and no justice for the children shown in these images, who have already been condemned to a life sentence of their own. Even if Edwards and Williams did not technically “create” any of these images, they still helped to create a market for them — and deserve to see the inside of a prison cell for doing so.
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SubscribeTwo tier Starmer.
Also now, in light of Frockgate:
Free gear Kier
(not invented by me sadly)
#KnickersToVicki (I refuse to use “Sir” or “Lady” to refer to this pair of Trotskyite grifters).
They aren’t Trots, they are Pablo-ite neo-Marxists, just like the ‘denser-fluid daschund… but yes, they are a pair of grifters.
Thank you for the article. I was indeed surprised when I read that he avoided jail, but your article gives some important context on how the law works.
” … on how the law works” to protect pedophiles.
Possession of csa images is an incitement to others to make those images and therefore to abuse children. Surely on a par with incitement to attack refugees, for which many people are now in jail.
The judge said he accepts Edwards had been of “exemplary” good character “having enjoyed a very successful career in the media”.
What rot.
More to the point, how it doesn’t work.
A question we ought also to be asking here is “If Huw Edwards had mental health problems, why was the BBC allowing him to continue in a stressful, front line role and not actively doing something to help ?”. Even I don’t believe they are so incompetent that they never became aware or noticed.
If he had serious, long-standing mental health problems, he needed help.
Of course, if he didn’t, his defence lawyers have been misleading the court.
Another equally likely possibility is that all those around him had similar levels of mental health problems therefore it wasn’t possible to replace him.
There are online rumours, perhaps further accusations will follow.
Also it’s interesting to note the accusatory venom that the mainstream media unleashed upon Russell Brand not so long ago, for which, as far as I’m aware, he’s been charged with absolutely nothing.
Contrast that with dear old BBC fixture Huey,with his ‘mental health problems’ (bless him), who has been charged and convicted of seriously sexual crimes, with as minimal publicity from the ‘impartial’ ‘public broadcaster’ as absolutely possible…
The UK justice has reached stalinian qualities, just without gulag or death penalty.You get legal documents, decorum, nice uniforms, and an enforcement of state persecution of political opponents.
I advocate for every pedo friendly judge to be sentenced for complicity. But the UK justice system is to be thrown away, ideally by replacing all magistrates by randomly sorted citizens, and stripping the whole lot from jobs, assets or pension.
They served the country as well as the Vivhy collaboration authorities, and should receive similar (or stronger) consequences.
I suppose the only (small) compensation is that he will have to spend the rest of his life with the knowledge that everyone in this country, along with millions around the world, will know him for the seedy, dirty old man that he clearly is.
Thats if he has any sense of shame of course.
He worked for the BBC, so will be totally incapable of self-criticism.
While the BBC causes mental health problems for the rest of us..
Or an iota of shame either.
My assumption following my education in these forums is that these guys: Newman, Edwards and Williams amongst many others are all of south Asian origin and likely belong to a certain religion. Because clearly, this problem doesn’t exist in the white population, and certainly not tolerated when it does.
What?
There are many ignorami on these forums who will jump at any opportunity to strongly associate Muslim south Asians with this kind of crime as it were some kind of unique quality for this community which is unheard of outside.
Is that clear enough?
Your comment is unclear.
Sadly it doesn’t look like you have received any education at all. Perhaps you should try and make a phrase from the following words: sequitur non man straw.
‘suggests that there is something fundamentally wrong with our justice system.‘
Only ‘suggests?’ I only hope that ‘mental illness’ isn’t suggested when the Southport murderer appears in court…..
Because there are no empty cells?
I don’t believe for one moment that Mr Edwards had any mental health issue at all. And even if he did, it doesn’t begin to excuse his behaviour.
And as for his absurd plea that he didn’t actually”pay” his kiddy-porn supplier, but was “just coincidentally giving him a Christmas present…” And we are told that the court accepted this facile contrivance; and actually took it into account when sentencing him. This is just the stuff of nightmares. It is quite unbelievable
Those images showed an under ten-year-old child being penetrated. Edwards should have gone down for five to ten years. And the magistrate who insisted on keeping the case rather than passing it up to a crown court, should be jailed with him.
You give no evidence to support your view that Mr Edwards had no mental health issue, so your first comment doesn’t survive elementary scrutiny. You then say even if he did had a mental condition, that wouldn’t ‘begin to excuse his behaviour’. It might not excuse his behaviour entirely, but it certainly begins to do so. In other words, to some degree, small or great, it is a mitigating factor. If not, what would be a mitigating factor? I think most likely you aren’t interested in any possible mitigation whatsoever. Am I right?
I don’t need to give “evidence”, I’m stating my view, just as you state yours. We’ve all watched this man on our screens for years,and I see nothing to persuade me that he should have a particularly lenient sentence.
I think that in cases like these, any mitigation should have a very high bar indeed. I think that we are far too lenient as a society, when confronted with quite foul behaviour. .
Well said. Quite stunned today by the general lack of interest in the poor victims of these horrible crimes and the risible excuse that Edwards having some chips on his shoulder about not getting into Oxford has anything whatsoever to do with the fact he and his WhatsApp correspondent were sharing and getting off on images of children being raped. Disgusting.
Like you, I have never met a paedophile. I mean, we might have done, in the way that we might have met a Muggletonian, But we are wholly unaware of having done so, you and I both. Yet this country’s cultural and political elite cannot get out of bed, if that, without tripping over one or more nonces. And every single time, our betters had had no idea. Or so we are invariably expected to believe.
The truth is that like illegal drug use, the sexual abuse of children, especially but not exclusively adolescent males, is fundamental to cultural and political power in this country, both those practices themselves and the opportunities that they present for blackmail. That in turn crosses over with the endemic sexual harassment and assault of male staff who are barely, if at all, into adulthood.
To silence Her comprehensive critique of the ideology known as centrism, the Catholic Church has been accused of being a hotbed of such activity in terms that are in fact as risible as QAnon, and barely distinguishable from it. Anyone who really believed them would be on par with anyone who really believed that. Centrism and right-wing populism are con tricks to sell exactly the same economic and foreign policies to different audiences by pretending to wage a culture war. At times, even their tactics are practically and effectively identical.
At the very least, those making such claims against the Church should be asked whether the behaviour alleged would be unacceptable in their own circles. Since it is almost always sex with postpubescent boys, then that question would answer itself. Again as with illegal drugs, they should be asked directly whether they had ever engaged in it. Moreover, the ones in Britain, at least, should always be asked whether the act in question would be illegal both in every member-state of their beloved European Union, and in every one of their beloved United States of America. By contrast, Catholic Canon Law has a specific offence of sexual activity with anyone under 18, regardless of any lower age of consent, if there even is one, in the civil jurisdiction where it took place. It is beyond dispute who has the moral high ground.
Huw Edwards’s sentence suits the liberal elite down to the ground, since the objections to it are coming from those sections of opinion which they regard as illegitimate. No good is done by complaining that Edwards has been treated more leniently than the Just Stop Oil and similar nuisances, who may not all have deserved as long as they got but who did deserve something, or the rioters, who have themselves been let off appallingly lightly. Centrists consider themselves proved right by criticism from either of those quarters. Never mind both.
I am very sorry to say you have met a peadophile. There are a depressing number of them and they don’t always get caught.
Cos it’s a big club and he’s in it.
Worth watching the barrister Daniel Shen-Smith on YT on this – try his channel “BlackBelt Secrets” as well as the main “BlackBeltBarrister” one.
Aaaah. So Edwards had a “history of mental health problems, supposedly exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic …” How doubly convenient!
With the introduction of the “Trump Era” we are all now living in…The media have become invincible. They can say & print whatever they please… with no repercussions & no one really to answer to…So are we really surprised that a BBC presenter received a slap on the wrist?
Alas our moral sense has become very much beaten out of shape
Thank you for article. It’s the sort of thing that should be more widely known.
They didn’t create the images in the common sense understanding of the word create. They were never anywhere near the children concerned, so no child was endangered by them sharing photos. The suspended sentence and the end of his career seem appropriate to me. Did Edwards actually pay to receive the images? That’s the only way in which he could be held responsible
Offer them assisted suicide.