To think this is overkill (Huw Edwards)

Man at centre of Huw Edwards case says he felt ‘groomed’ by presenter

Person who admitted sending BBC presenter explicit messages and videos when teenager felt taken ‘advantage of’

Exactly.

The government need to pull the plug on the BBC and abolish the BBC TV Licence immediately. NOW!

Everyone will be £169.50 better off and will we no longer be funding the abuse of women (Strictly) & children.

Bevause he admitted it (evsntually) and it was widely reported.

I’m shocked by some of the comments here.

I have chosen not to respond to people who have argued with me as I just do not want to interact with anyone who thinks Edwards’ behaviour is ok.

Frightening.

@Newbutoldfather reserve judgement until sentencing?! He's admitted possessing the worst images.

Either you have zero understanding of the basics of the judicial system or your moral compass needs a complete reset.

Your user name suggests you're a new father - perhaps to a baby. The images Edwards had in his possession were of the worst kind, and of children as young as 7. Think on that.

genuine question-ant it just be eddited out theyve done it pr4eviously wit harris in a scene on goodnigt sweetheart

@EatingTillIDie

Given they will have gone through all his history, that's telling to me, if this is all they could find.

"All they could find"?

Multiple images, at least some moving, of children aged between 7 and 9 being raped?

That's "all they could find".

What's that "telling" you? Be specific please. I'm interested in what that's "telling" you.

The bbc have said they are going to try to claw back payments made to him since his arrest and to do what they can about his pension too but obviously they can only act within the law and their employment conditions. Perhaps this is part of an attempt to ensure the bbc don’t pay him another penny?
I do think people convicted of certain crimes should be no longer profiting from their work but there are also others like Michael Jackson and OJ who continue to profit because there has been limited success in prosecutions/ civil cases instead of criminal / settlements without prejudice who should be stopped but won’t be because enough fans still believe their innocence.
One of the worst of these for many years was R Kelly although he was finally imprisoned after evading justice for a long time.

Fucking hell

all they could find

I'm sorry what???

What is wrong with you

Indeed.

He pled guilty so all the sordid details wouldn't see the light of day.

I can thinks of more painful and therfore better punishment for the dirty fucker.

This is just purely my own personal opinion; but I do wonder if HE instantly pleaded guilty, because there could be much worse to follow.

I also wonder now if his MH breakdown when the first story broke was due to the fact that he knew that there was more to come out...

I have never seen a defendant walk out on a SS for 40 category A images

How about a SS for 3472 images and 1634 videos of Cat A offences? And 5 counts of making indecent images of children himself? The judge felt this man had "suffered enough" apparently. These images and videos made up part of Garling/Davidson's collection of 25000 files of child abuse images

No he just stored them on his phone for shits n giggles and continued to happily chat to the bloke that sent them to him.

He is absolutely a danger to children.

Exactly! If the images were saved before this person even clapped eyes on the computer (and surely you'd have some sort of proof of when you bought it) then they've either got a shit defence team or there's a rabbit off.

Surely if HE was as misunderstood as some posters are claiming he'd be desperate to have his day in court in an attempt to clear his name; he's wealthy enough to be able to afford the very best defence barrister. He hasn't though. He's pleaded guilty.

Yes, it is precisely because the BBC seem to think that they can do whatever they want - is the reason why they should be immediately defunded. The government needs to abolish the BBC TV Licence NOW!

The BBC seems to have forgotten that it is funded by us!

And maybe his grooming of a younger, vulnerable man wasn't technically illegal but it was immoral and inappropriately using his license fee funded power and the BBC's lack of response to the mother approaching them was also inappropriate and wrong.

Dubbing over HEs voice in one children's programme is not the same as 'erasing all trace of him'. There is no suggestion they're removing / changing non children's tv. And it's further massive reaching to suggest the actions taken for a convicted paedophile and a children's tv programme somehow create a slippery slope for erasing 'wrongthink'.

The BbC is already massively biased towards paedophiles e.g
Describing minor prostituted children/ child sexual abuse victims as ' sex workers', routinely spreads misinformation (e.g. recently about the controversy in women's boxing where most of their reporting is flat wrong,) and excludes journalists who don't follow their party line e.g. Hannah Barnes. So if you're worried about bias there are much bigger things to worry about.

Oh the irony someone who doesn’t think he’s a paedophile despite having 40 class A pictures of kids has the name “fiddle” in their name.

Wow, I think I was asking a pretty fair question in a polite way, what’s with the tone of this response?

In fact, you haven’t even responded to my question. Of course I know the rape and abuse of children is illegal, how in any way does that relate to whether he wanted to witness it?

Reading from subsequent, more polite posts I now understand that he kept them stored on his phone. Didn’t know that was the case, so that (to me personally) confirms that he had bad intentions.

Ah I see Sorry @LuluBlakey1 I apologise, I am not fully awake yet obviously.

The BBC haven’t learned anything from the Saville or Harris debacles. They suspended Edwards and continued to pay him a whopping salary for nine months, and then allowed him to resign during a disciplinary procedure.

There are two issues here. The first is that Edwards was suspended in July 2023 when the Sun printed allegations that an unnamed presenter had paid a teenager to obtain sexually explicit photographs for him. Edwards’ wife named him, and said he hands been hospitalised with mental health issues. A full two months before that story was published, the family of the teenager complained to the BBC. The BBC were forced to apologise in February 2024 for the way it had handled those and other complaints. No charges were brought as there was no evidence of anything illegal at that time.

The second issue is that in November 2023, the BBC were advised by the police that Edwards was being investigated in connection with the nature of those images. The BBC deny knowledge of specifics but they knew the serious categorisation. He was allowed to resign in April, in the middle of ongoing disciplinary investigations ‘on the advice of his doctors’. He should have been sacked. IMO he used mental health issues to avoid the consequences of those investigations and to try to mitigate what he knew was coming next.

The number of posters trying to somehow excuse Edwards from being complicit in the sexual exploitation of young people just reinforces the rising double standards on MN.

I posted earlier on in the thread and one of the points I made was about how we excuse men who are pedophiles, who sexually assault women and children- if the man is famous. Not only do we (as a society) excuse them, we tolerate them, ignore their behaviours, laud them, support them, are happy for our children to idolise them and we pay a fortune to watch them play football/music/dance/act and, in one case, we vote for them as President of the US.

This is a really complex issue and we need to look at how, as a society, we help create these people, sometimes as icons in their chosen area. We give them power and allow them to keep it. It protects them. We need to examine our own behaviours .