Misery goes on for Huw victims
FROM the BBC’s top news presenter to a convicted paedophile sex offender . . . Huw Edwards’ final public disgrace was handed down by a judge yesterday.
Many, though, will ask how the shamed star avoided prison given the sickening new court revelations.
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When a paedophile asked online if he wanted “naughty pics and vids” of a young person, Edwards said: “Go on.”
He paid up to £1,500 to a pervert who sent him 41 depraved images including a video of a boy as young as seven.
Each was a real victim of horrific sexual abuse — their suffering obvious, their young life already ruined.
Edwards thought those images were “amazing”.
Not appalling, not horrific. Amazing.
We hold no brief whatsoever for yobs who made threats online during the riots.
But plenty were locked up without hesitation, including one for retweeting someone else’s post.
Yet Edwards, one-time pillar of the establishment, walked free with a six-month term suspended for two years.
He will be on the sex offenders’ register not for life, but for only seven years.
Indeed eight out of ten paedos with child abuse images avoid prison.
Why? Their crimes — Edwards’ crimes — are very, very far from victimless.
They fuel a heinous global trade in child sexual exploitation.
And we can only wonder what further offences police might have unearthed had they got hold of all of Edwards’ devices.
By the time they arrested him last November he had already been suspended by the BBC for four months — during which time the phone he used to swap messages with his paedophile pal had been disposed of.
Along with who knows what else?
The mother of the victim in our original story certainly believes the BBC predator should be in prison.
Phone was disposed of
The family watched their son, once a “normal, happy teenager”, spiral into drink and drug addiction fuelled by the star’s cash.
When the BBC ignored their complaints they came to us and we gave them a voice. But their trauma is ongoing.
The corporation was contrite yesterday. So it should be.
We hope other media figures, who with zero knowledge of the case initially claimed Edwards was innocent and idiotically attacked The Sun, are examining their consciences.
Was there a wilful blindness — from the police, his BBC employers and his media friends — over the true character of this once-respected household name?
Our thoughts now are with the victims of this grim scandal: The young man and family on whom we first reported
The Sun
Our thoughts now are with the victims of this grim scandal: The young man and family on whom we first reported.
And the unknown children whose abhorrent sexual violation so thrilled the BBC’s highest-paid journalist.
Today Edwards breathes free air.
But their suffering goes on.
No one should forget that.