How is Huw Edwards different to Philip Schofield

[user6482952]

Heard this question raised on LBC this morning and was wondering the same thing.

How are the two any different? Both older men engaged with younger men, both cheating on their wives, and both claiming mental health issues post revelation.

Was HE obtaining the photos etc from a man?
A few people seem to think it was a woman. It hasn't been made clear.
With PS the fact that he lied to his employer didn't help matters ( that's what Nick Ferrari thinks and I tend to agree with him)

I don’t understand all the sympathy he’s getting, he’s a man in his 60’s married with kids, yet still behaving inappropriately with what sounds like quite a few young people. I had ongoing mental health issues for 2 decades and I feel uncomfortable with this “ah his mental health” thing. It seems to be something men pull out with whenever shamed for behaviour they know will be viewed as negative.

I reserve my sympathy for their wives and kids frankly, nice men don’t pay teenagers for explicit pictures.

Liam Payne was 14 when he was mentored by Cheryl Cole, some 10 years his senior, on an ITV programme. They went on to have a baby. Could she now be accused of grooming Liam from an early age in the hope of a future relationship.?

Did she keep in touch with Liam after she met him at 14? No. She didn’t get him jobs or work experience like PS did.

By the time they got together, he was in the biggest boy band on the planet. He was equally wealthy, well travelled, equally if not more successful. Cheryl was only early 30s, was equally attractive, there was no power imbalance. They also had an actual relationship which they were public about and still co parent their child. They talk about each other fondly. Although I’m not a fan of age gap relationships when one is so young, it’s not at all comparable.

Both are gross, one marginally more acceptable as his actions were legal but still gross. The issues with the messages sent to colleagues is a gross misconduct and dismissal issue but again not worthy of pushing a man to suicide.

One thing that does need resolving is how these kind of allegations are investigated and reported. The Sun have accused an innocent man of being a paedophile with the language used in their reporting. The police have investigated and found nothing illegal has taken place. Will The Sun be held to account for this?

This is a very different take on it; but I used to work doing cam shows and as an escort and there were so many men that would try to negotiate your price down, make you do things you didn't want to do for very little money, and generally try to get away with not paying, if they possibly could.

The 17 year old was on only fans therefore HE could have legitimately believed him to be 18; and the teen was clearly open to sending explicit photos etc as this is what Onlyfans is for.

So my take from it is at least HE paid extremely generously (35k), and did at least appreciate that very good money should be paid if you are going to ask a young person to compromise themselves in that way. That is life changing money. Very sad that it ended up feeding a drug habit but it did have the potential to set this person up for a good life in return for only a few photos.

I realise my opinion is skewed, as sex worker, but it is another viewpoint. That HE took up services he believed were legitimately offered and paid a huge and very generous financial amount for them. (Not that it makes it OK of course)

The 17 year old was on only fans therefore HE could have legitimately believed him to be 18

You don’t know this, no one does

We know that nothing illegal took place because 2 police investigations and the other party all say so

What appears to be very similar with both is the lack of teeth that the BBC and ITV complaints department has. Why they fail, only independent investigations will uncover, but its clear they are not fit for purpose.

If they are going to employ talent to work in an area which gives them power and pay them money is no object salaries they need extra robust practices to protect others that might be exploited.

A quite different picture of HE is now starting to be emerge with references to 'a complicated private life' and a 'reputation for being indiscrete' being made by his colleagues/associates.

To me, there's no difference.
Both in positions of power engaging in sleazy, though not illegal behaviour
Personally I'm more surprised by Huw Edwards, as he was seen as a more upstanding person somehow.
His announcement of the queens death, funeral and the kings coronation would have been transmitted around the world

Well, yeah they likely wouldn't be investigated for what they did in their private time as the employer wouldn't know about it.

But if someone was threatening to publicly expose their private activities then some employers do have to investigate if it's happening etc. because there are definite legal , moral and professional implications for someone who holds a position of high status or trust in society.

If you're a manager at Lidl, not so much. Public sector employees particularly so, TV presenters etc included in those who have a high status.

What bothers me is the BBC have known about the complaint for several weeks, but HE only found out at the same time as the public.

Since no laws have been broken here, I don't regard these individual's specific stories to be any of my business.

But one can ask in a general sense: Is it necessarily "evil" for an older adult to have a sexual relationship with a younger adult? Clearly Rupert Murdoch, the ancient but rich and powerful owner of the Sun, doesn't think so as he's gone through several wives who were decades his junior.

Speaking as an older gay man who has been happily celibate for years, I personally think it pointless and distasteful for people to continue bothering with sexual relationships once they reach middle age, regardless of their sex or orientation.

Basic self respect should ensure one finds it silly to pretend that one is still physically attractive when grey, flabby and wrinkled. And the hormones should have settled down to such an extent that one can see sex as the crude and comical behaviour of youth.

But it's clear that some (probably many) people disagree with me, and I'm not necessarily going to pass moral judgement on them.

PS groomed a young man and then had an affair with someone who he was in a position of power over.

As far as we know, all HE did was pay for pictures on only fans or similar of a consenting adult, something many many men do. I think this witch hunt is unfair, unless there’s more to come out.

GB news will have him !

You're going on rumours.

There's no evidence that the young person was on OF. That's an Internet rumour.

There's also currently no evidence that the young person received any money at all or that if they did, it was in exchange for explicit images.

The Sun reported that the Mum of the initial person mentioned said her child had received 35k from the BBC presenter and had seen bank transfers. Which they said were in exchange for explicit photos.

The Sun didn't claim to have seen these bank transfers. They said the parents had signed an affidavit saying what they told The Sun was true.

The young person in question says nothing illegal or inappropriate happened between them and HE.

Could be true, could be a lie in this extremely confusing case but to date, no actual evidence has been put forward of much at all.

But lots of implications, suppositions, rumours and assumptions.

PS groomed his from a young teenager.

HE did what a staggering amount of men do and partook in porn, no doubt from a site that the person had set up themselves and were raking in the money.

2 very different cases.

It's good that these colleagues who felt they couldn't speak out before have done.
Maybe work culture will change a lot after all this ? Slow changes , but let's hope it is for the better
People think they won't be believed i suppose and don't want to lose their jobs , so it's all hushed up. That needs to change too
Although I appreciate it's not that easy to do

It's not too hard a stretch surely to accept two men, both in the vloset for decades and presumably struggling emotionally with that should have emotional breakdowns when details if what they had done is splashed all over the papers, tv and internet? Can people not see that mental health issues would arise from this? Both have done wrong but clearly have struggled with the revelation of the wrong doing

If it was "just" porn, how would the young person know HE's identify and how would there be direct payments? Also £35k?!

HE has a long documented history of MH problems and has discussed being on anti depressants in the past so I am willing to accept that his MH has taken a catastrophic nose dive with the shattering of his public image and private life.

His behaviour appears sleazy but there was no illegality found. The Sun couldn’t have seen evidence of the payments without the young person’s consent as that information was confidential and the YP was not cooperating with the Sun or corroborating the story.

HE may very well have been predatory but we don’t actually know much when the supposition and rumour is stripped away. It will be interesting to see what else emerges.

PS’s situation was clearer. There was evidence that he and the runner were spending time together/ were in a relationship.

Meanwhile presumably his wife's being expected to cope with her DH's alleged behaviour being all over the media, the loss of his career, the knowledge of what he's alleged to have done, the realisation that whatever the truth career wise he's very unlikely to come back from this and the betrayal of her and their children.

When does SHE get to have an emotional breakdown?

Lots of famous people bounce back from scandals.
Used to read it all the time as a child in the people newspaper or news of the world , but that ended up as chip paper and no rolling 24 hour news either.
Difference now is the internet , it's out there forever now and follows them around a lot more.
The 35 k that was paid was spread over three years I believe.

Isn't it also likely that the MH issues are caused, a least in part, by living a lie and all the secrets/fear of being found out?

Both totally repugnant. What is worse, however, than these individual cases, is the fact that it does make you think about ALL men and their behaviour. It is beginning to seem as though any of them will do whatever they can get away with in order to satisfy their own desires, however inappropriate these might be. How can someone with as much to lose as HE think he'd get away with it? and just because something is not illegal (which is what the BBC keeps banging on about), doesn't make it ok. Now he is in hiding under the ME excuse.