Huw Edwards was handed down a suspended sentence in court on Monday after he previously pleaded guilty to three counts of “making” indecent images of children.
The ex-BBC presenter was sent 41 illegal images between December 2020 and August 2021 by a paedophile he paid £1,500.
Seven of these images fell into the most serious category.
Officers caught Edwards after they investigated 25-year-old Alex Williams – who exchanged WhatsApp messages containing the images with the BBC newsreader.
But what was Edwards’s defence in court?
Mitigating factors
For Edwards, the court heard a number of mitigating factors, including risks over his mental health, the newsreader being “vulnerable” at the time the offending took place and Edwards’s previous good character.
In district judge Paul Goldspring’s sentencing remarks, he referenced a psychiatrist’s report that concluded the risk of Edwards taking his own life was “high and significant” if he was imprisoned.
It also added he was at “considerable risk of harm from others” if he had ended up in prison.
A separate report conducted by a psychosexual therapist said: “The feelings of being desirable and unseen alongside Mr Edwards’s unresolved sexual orientation created a perfect storm where he engaged in sexual infidelities and became vulnerable to people blackmailing him.”
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Judge Goldspring said he believed Edwards’s remorse was genuine and his mental health could have impaired his decision-making.
He continued: “I am of the clear view that you [Edwards] do not present a risk or danger to the public at large, specifically to children.
“There is a realistic prospect of rehabilitation.”
The judge also said that Edwards was of “previous good character” and, until now, had been “very highly regarded by the public” – whom to many he had broken the news of the late Queen’s death.
He also told Edwards he would be subject to 25 rehabilitation sessions and placed on the sex offender treatment programme for 40 days.
Edwards was ordered to pay £3,000 in prosecution costs and was told he would be put on the sex offenders’ register for seven years.
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The court also heard how Edwards’s relationship with his father was said to be “probably damaging psychologically”.
Michael Isaac, a consultant psychiatrist and neuropsychiatrist described “the restrictive, puritanical, but often hypocritical, background of growing up in the particular cultural milieu of South Wales, with a father who was highly regarded and lauded outside the family, but was perceived as behaving monstrously within the family”.
This created an “enduring cognitive dissonance and low self-esteem”, which was “compounded by a sense of being inferior” by not getting into Oxford University and going to Cardiff instead and “being therefore something of an outsider at the BBC”.
Mr Isaac said this, along with bouts of depression, “significantly and adversely affected” Edwards’ decision-making.
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Defence barrister Philip Evans KC told the court Edwards didn’t store the illegal images, gain any gratification from them, send them onwards or seek out more.
The court also heard Edwards was “vulnerable” when Williams “sought him out”.
