What happened to Huw Edwards?

Huw Edwards has become the latest famous face from the BBC to be associated with child abuse.

The former news presenter, who was famously the media face of Queen Elizabeth II’s death, was given a suspended prison sentence on Monday as a result of images of child sexual abuse on his phone.

One of the biggest scandals in Britain in recent years was the Jimmy Saville abuse case, in which the former BBC presenter and good friend of Margaret Thatcher was revealed to be an abuser on an industrial scale. Saville, however, died before facing any justice. Thankfully, this isn’t the case for Edwards.

The 63 year-old gave a guilty plea in Westminster Magistrates’ Court earlier this year on three counts of making indecent images of children. These charges were related to photographs that had been sent to him via a WhatsApp service. The group had been created by a man who had previously been convicted of distributing images similar to those found on Edwards’ phone.

Edwards faced chief magistrate Paul Goldsprint, the latter of whom sentenced the Welsh television personality to a six-month prison term, suspended for two years. He has also been placed on a sex offenders register.

The BBC isn’t just under fire because another face associated with it has been found guilty of this heinous crime. The organization, known for everything from news to nature documentaries, was revealed to have spent over $250 thousand on Edwards’ salary for five months after he had been arrested last November.

The BBC is publicly funded by a license fee, which all households with a television in the U.K. must pay. The publicly funded broadcaster has claimed it has asked him to pay the salary back, and a press release from the network added that it was “appalled by his crimes,” and that Edwards had not “betrayed just the BBC, but audiences who put their trust in him.”

“We are appalled by his crimes,” the BBC also said in that statement, released after the sentencing.

Edwards was an incredibly prominent face on the network until his arrest, and had been one of the biggest earners at the organization. The Queen’s death was the major event of his career, but he has also previously led election coverage on the network, and broken other important stories.

This all changed in July of 2023, when he was suspended by the BBC because of different claims made against him. These allegations involved a teenager that Edwards supposedly paid for explicit photos, although after a police investigation no charges were brought against him.

These allegations were technically made against a prominent BBC presenter, and Edwards was never officially named. However, his wife revealed later on that it had in fact been him being investigated, and that the ordeal had led her into a mental health spiral.

The nature of his crimes aren’t just incredibly serious, but extensive. A massive 375 sexual images were sent to Edwards via WhatsApp over the course of 9 months, between December 2020 and August 2021. 40 of these were labelled as indecent images of children, seven of which were named as “category A” images. These are photographs that are considered the most indecent, and the children in the images were suspected of being between 13 and 15. The youngest child in the images and videos was estimated to be between 7 and 9 years old.

There were also damning messages in which Edwards was enthusiastic about receiving images of children whose “age could be discerned as being between 14 and 16.” The disgraced news presenter responded “yes xxx.”

Lead prosecutor Ian Hope discussed this in court, stating: “From that chat in December 2020, Alex Williams [the operator of the WhatsApp service] said that he had ‘a file of vids and pics for you of someone special.'” Williams was also the person who sent Edwards the video that included the potential 7 year old. Penetration was involved in the video.

Edwards’ lawyer Philip Evans said that the former newsman was “truly sorry” for what he had done, and the damage he had caused his family, adding: “He apologizes sincerely and he makes it clear that he has the utmost regret and he recognizes that he has betrayed the priceless trust and faith of so many people.”