Huw Edwards could face jail after he pleaded guilty to making 41 indecent images of children.
Any hope of him returning to broadcasting has also been extinguished by his convictions at Westminster Magistrates’ Court yesterday.
The disgraced newsreader will be sentenced on September 16.
But many questions remain about his crimes, including how the vile indecent abuse pictures of children ended up on his phone in a WhatsApp chat with a paedophile.
How they swapped numbers and why the BBC’s star newsreader didn’t go to the police over indecent images of children sent to him by sex offender Alex Williams also remains unknown.
Instead they chatted over text for eight months in a period where Edwards delivered coverage of Prince Philip’s funeral to the nation.
How did Huw Edwards end up on a WhatsApp chat with a paedophile who sent him child porn?
Huw Edwards is yet another BBC star to be disgraced after he admitted three counts of making indecent pictures of children between 2020 and 2022
Alex Williams (pictured) was snared by Welsh police – who later discovered he had sent Edwards a series of indecent images of children
Detectives discovered last November that 25-year-old Alex Williams had been speaking with the former BBC anchor and sending him sick images over WhatsApp, passing the evidence onto Scotland Yard.
The pair chatted for several months, after apparently meeting on social media and then swapping phone numbers.
Ian Hope, prosecuting, told the court yesterday that Williams had sent Edwards 377 images, 41 of which were indecent and formed the charges to which the veteran broadcaster pleaded guilty yesterday.
Two of the images involved a child believed to be as young as seven, Westminster Magistrates Court heard.
Edwards, 62, received and opened seven category A – the most indecent – images, 12 category B and 22 category C photos between December 2020 and August 2021.
Prosecutor Ian Hope told the court: ‘The bulk of those indecent images were sent to Mr Edwards within a two-month period and indeed the bulk of those were within a two-day period,’ Mr Hope said.
‘Towards the end of February 2021, the male queried whether the children were too young, to which Mr Edwards responded to say not to send any more.
‘At this point a further five images were sent and read by him.
‘The final one was sent in August 2021.
‘It depicted a male child of a younger age than the other images.
‘Mr Edwards and the male discussed the images. Mr Edwards tells this male not to send him these images and no more were sent, although the chat continues.’
Alex Williams is yet to comment.
Why didn’t Huw Edwards go to the police and keep chatting with paedophile Alex Williams AFTER being sent indecent images of children?
Huw Edwards’ offending only came to light by chance – after police in South Wales found his number on the phone of another paedophile, Alex Williams, 25
Huw Edwards’ offending only came to light by chance – after police in South Wales found his number on the phone of another paedophile.
The married father-of-five did not go to the police when Alex Williams began sending him child porn.
During the time of the exchanges with Williams, which took place over eight months, Edwards delivered coverage of Prince Philip’s funeral to the nation.
UK law makes it an offence to make, distribute or possess all forms of child pornography.
It is also a so-called strict liability offence, meaning that the prosecution is not required to prove any intention or knowledge of criminal wrongdoing.
But experts have said that Edwards should have gone to the police – but didn’t.
In fact he continued contact with Alex Williams afterwards.
‘Just to be clear, if you are sent unsolicited child porn and report it immediately to the police you will not be prosecuted’, according to one on the Roll On Friday legal blog.
‘It happens quite often and there is never any question of prosecuting the reporting party. If you delete it and block the sender but don’t report it there is a very small chance that you may later be prosecuted.
‘There is a child victim at the other end of the offence and, if you don’t report it, we can’t investigate and protect the child’.
Why was Huw Edwards charged with ‘making’ child pornography?
Edwards received seven category ‘A’ images of the very worst kind on his phone after being sent them on WhatsApp by paedophile Alex Williams
According to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), ‘making’ an indecent image has been broadly interpreted by the courts.
It can range from opening an attachment to an email containing an image, to accessing pornographic websites in which indecent photographs of children appear by way of an automatic ‘pop-up’ mechanism.
In the case of Edwards, he received the illegal images as part of a WhatsApp conversation.
Speaking in Edwards’ defence, his barrister Philip Evans KC said his client had not ‘created’ the images ‘in the traditional sense of the word’.
A number of potential defences to the charge exist, including not seeing the images and having no reason to believe that the images were indecent, having a legitimate reason to possess the images, or if the images were unsolicited and not kept for an unreasonable amount of time.
But Edwards decided to plead guilty.
Will Huw Edwards go to prison?
The maximum prison sentence for making an indecent image of a child is 10 years.
Sentencing guidelines set the starting point for any jail term for possession of a Category A image at 12 months, with a range of 26 weeks to three years.
The starting point is 26 weeks for a category B image, and a community order for category C.
Aggravating features to be taken into account for Edwards include that the images included moving images, and the young age of the child thought to be seven to nine years old in two of the category A images.
The disgraced newsreader (sketched in the dock yesterday) will be sentenced on September 16.
Mitigating factors are Edwards’ early guilty plea, his previous good character, his mental health issues, and his remorse.
Director at criminal defence firm Olliers Solicitors, Ruth Peters, said that while a jail term is an option open to chief magistrate Paul Goldspring during Edwards’ sentencing hearing on September 16, a suspended sentence or community order is more likely.
Edwards is a first-time offender who pleaded guilty with a relatively low number of images, which were strong mitigating factors, she added.
The former Ten O’Clock News presenter will be added to the Sex Offenders’ Register automatically following his guilty pleas.
‘He will be required to notify the police of certain personal information within three days and must attend a local police station in person to notify,’ Ms Peters said.
Who at the BBC knew that he had been arrested in November 2023? When were his bosses told he had been charged?
The BBC knew of Huw Edwards’ arrest over accessing indecent images of children in November but continued employing him until April, the corporation has said.
BBC News Culture and Media Editor Katie Razzall has said a ‘handful of people’ at the Corporation were told of Edwards’ arrest.
In a statement, the BBC said: ‘In November 2023, whilst Mr Edwards was suspended, the BBC as his employer at the time was made aware in confidence that he had been arrested on suspicion of serious offences and released on bail whilst the police continued their investigation.
‘At the time, no charges had been brought against Mr Edwards and the BBC had also been made aware of significant risk to his health.’
The BBC’s Director General Tim Davie has been summoned to meet Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy today to explain the BBC’s role in the scandal, including who had knowledge of Edwards’ arrest eight months ago
BBC News staff claim they did not find out he was charged until it was revealed on Monday.
But there are claims that the Met Police had contacted the BBC to tell them ahead of the announcement.
There are also major questions about why there was a gap of five weeks between Edwards being charged and it being announced and him being put in the dock.
But the corporation defended its actions last night, saying had he been charged while he was still employed there, rather than after he resigned, it would have acted ‘immediately’ to ‘dismiss him’.
Despite the admission, questions were still circulating within the BBC about what bosses knew and when, and whether the star was given preferential treatment.
The corporation is also facing mounting pressure to publish the findings of its own secretive internal review into the conduct of the now disgraced household name, which it never made public.
