Huw Edwards - receiving pics is a crime?

[PurpleMat]

Looking at the details in the Huw Edwards case, someone else sent him all these pics of underage children. And that is enough for him to be totally screwed and most likely going to prison. I've no idea if it makes a difference if you ask for them to be sent or not?

My DC are approaching secondary age when most of their peers will be getting mobile phones, and I am seriously worried about what kind of pictures of could be floating about on WhatsApp. It only takes one kid to be sent something dodgy by an older relative and it could be forwarded on to hundreds of others.

If one of my DC receives an unsolicited image and it is discovered (for example by the school confiscating a phone, which I'm lead to believe happens quite often) is that my DC totally screwed?

What exactly is the law on this?

I'm seriously thinking smartphones with WhatsApp for young teens are a bad idea at this point...

He didn't just receive one image and ignore it though. It was multiple images and they are split into categories depending on severity of what is depicted.

He had images that were children engaged in penetrative sexual activity and that two of the images were children aged between 7 and 9. They will also look at the length of time these images were sent over and messages around it. They were sent from a convicted paedophile so it is likely that he was soliciting these images.

It would be very unlikely for a child to be sent one image and then be convicted of anything as the police will look in more detail around circumstances. I assume the police officer was because she didn't report it, although I haven't heard of this case.

It's pretty clear he wasn't just sent these pictures though. He engaged with the guy who sent them, asked for more, specified what he wanted...

I'd hope that the police would take a different view of a teenager who had received an image and not interacted etc but definitely worth having a conversation with teens about this.

I have named changed for this.

Last summer, we were all happily sat in the garden (Me, DH and two teen DSs) when the police turned up at the house. Two officers.

They had information that illegal child pornography had been viewed in the house. They were actually already pretty sure which phone it was on (thankfully since if they had thought it was DH it would have been far more difficult a situation).

It transpired that DS2 who was 13 had been sent pictures on snapchat and via discord. He was going through a period where he had made online friends (initially through minecraft) and as part of that he had been sent photos.

The police went through all the DCs devices. They literally stayed in the house and went through their laptops iPads and their phones. They were here for a few hours.

They found a number of pornographic images which had been sent via snapchat from randoms (of adults trying to encourage dialogue with DS2). They also found images and videos of underage children. Plus evidence of hensai (japanese cartoon porn) on DS1's device.

In DS1's case (he was 15) they warned him that hensai is still pornographic content and because there is a tendency to portray characters as much younger that this counts as child pornography. They said if he was older they would still be able to prosecute over possession of this (although the police officer told me afterwards that there wasn't much on there really so it was more to give him a scare).

In DS2s case they said that the stuff on snapchat was of underage girls but that because the girls were of DS2s age and it was clear they had sent the photos and videos to him unprompted that they wouldn't take that further even though technically it was an offence. DS hadn't forwarded anything on or anything like that. There was one image on his phone which he had deleted. It was a graphic image of a young girl probably under ten and DS had responded saying something along the lines of "FFS don't send that to me - way too young - just delete it". The police made it very clear that just receiving the image was an offence.

Both DC were in shock. When speaking to the police alone we told them not to pull any punches with them so they spoke to them at length and frankly terrified them both.

I actually felt like I was in shock for a couple of days after seeing the images.

Both DH and I work in a professional role where we cannot have any criminal convictions. If they thought we had downloaded the images we would have lost our jobs and been struck off so that we couldn't work again.

We then then had follow up calls with social services. Fortunately we were "discharged" pretty much straight away since they could see that we were supportive of the police actions and that there wasn't general reason for concern but we are now as a family "in the system" and if anything like this happened again with either child then there would be issues.

I actually think we were lucky. If the DC had been older the police would have taken further action. So I'm sort of glad it happened in a bizarre way. At the time it was absolutely horrendous.

Keep an eye on your children's devices. The crap about their right to "privacy" is outweighed by the damage that can be caused if you don't monitor what is going on (at the time I thought I did but I'm not familiar enough with the apps and so didn't know where to look).

@taybert absolutely he was in the wrong as anyone else would have blocked the sender and reported. But technically if your child was in a WhatsApp group and someone in that group posted an indecent image of an under 18 your child received that image

The law isn’t at fault here, the people sending and receiving images of children being abused are at fault. And if people really do genuinely receive such images through absolutely no fault of their own but do nothing about it then yes, they are also guilty.

This! You have to rather wonder about a conversation that includes "don't send me anything illegal". I haven't had to make that request of anyone who I message.

It's curious, however, that the law allows you to be prosecuted for the involuntary actions of a device you own. It's wide open for issues with AI.

However, I imagine Huw Edwards would have perhaps argued his case if the conversation surrounding the images was innocent...

I doubt he’ll go to prison anyway. There is case after case recently of men being let off for this. I suspect a lot of it has to do with the fact there’s no room in prison and loads of these offenders. It’s horrifying.

Yes, especially when the children, are the same age as the person receiving the images.

I don't know what the answer is, but I'm sure Huw's situation would be very different if he'd received a one off image, been horrified and blocked the sender. I don't for a minute think this has come about because he's the victim of unsolicited pictures.

If they delete it, it would be fine - it's illegal to have (keep) a photo in your possession of someone underage.

Well from what it sounds like, he had someone who was sending him hundreds of legal images and sent some illegal ones too. Which he ‘didn’t want’. But normal people don’t have porn dealers on their WhatsApp. So that’s phase 1 of self-protection. Don’t put yourself at risk of receiving things like that in the first place.

Then if you do, any regular person would be utterly horrified and contact the police immediately. As in, ring 999 probably. And be totally open about what happened.

With regards to kids - this is precisely why you lock it all down, the phone is yours (the parent’s) and you let the child use it. You pay for it, it’s yours, you can look through it whenever you want and know exactly what is happening on it. And have open conversations with your kids about online safety etc.

Exactly. I am shocked about the child stuff- the fact he kept it and did not report it is utterly shocking

I'm sorry, what? What sort of a ridiculous comment is that? He's 62, not 102. Whatsapp has been around since 2009, he's had 15 years to get acquainted with it and he worked as a news presenter - he's not stupid, he's educated enough to figure out a simple messaging app.

Fucking ridiculous to try and excuse someone who has viewed child abuse images as being "too old" to understand how to send and receive messages.

Some people will literally try and excuse anything, even when that something has caused harm to children.

If I was sent an image like this I would go straight to the police. Anyone who doesn't do that is a criminal and is furthering the sexual abuse of children. It really is that simple.

We got sent some pictures after using an internet care in the Far East some years ago. They were deleted, reported to the internet provider and the sender blocked.

@kitchendiscotime easy to tell if this relates to a young child, but what about if the young person is 17, not so easy to make the distinction between them and an 18yo. So if group of 18yos share porn photos they could fall foul of the law if found out an image was of 17yo

But he specifically asked the sender not to send any photos of anyone underage and again not to send any photos that are illegal. Pretty difficult to argue that’s soliciting!

My friends DS was sent a pic and reported it to the police immediately, agree with @kitchendiscotime.

She was finally reinstalled and her case dropped.

1. If you receive any pictures, report it immediately.
2. Teens sometimes will send pics of themselves which is then making indecent images of a child.
3. Teachers will not look through phones.
4. If someone reported to a teacher about an image they have been sent, they would not look at it to confirm or deny, they will just report it via their safeguarding team.

I teach the laws around image sharing every year to every year group, and there are still kids who think it doesn't apply to them.

I agree, you don't delete it, you report it immediately and directly ie not forwarding it. I'd actually turn my phone off. The info on your phone will record what you have done with it. What H.E. did wrong was not immediately reporting the sender and that failure made him complicit.

OK you've just described my nightmare scenario, and I can see how this could easily happen with young teens who don't really think about consequences.

Looking back is there anything you would now do differently with your DC? What age did they get smartphones? Would you still allow them at that age? Or wait til they were older?

@crumblingschools yes I know, but if the law doesn’t cover the receipt of images then it starts to become much easier for actual paedophiles to wiggle out of with the defence that they only received it. The law has to cover that scenario.

It’s scary. But if as concerned parents we’re looking at this and thinking that it would be really easy for young teenagers to fall foul of it because they are impetuous and lack maturity, make bad decisions and panic when something goes wrong, they why do we continue to give them the equipment to so easily put themselves in that situation? We don’t stick 13 year olds behind the wheel of a car and cheerily wave them off reminding them not to crash. We recognise that they are too young to drive and that it isn’t safe so we don’t allow them. With smartphones we also recognise that there are huge dangers, but we hand them over anyway.

I’m not trying to judge anyone who has given their child a smartphone. Technology has accelerated hugely in the last 20 years and as adults we’ve moved with it. But until recently no one has really stopped to think about whether the devices we’re using now are really suitable for children. We just give kids phones because we think it helps to keep them safe. There are no phone boxes for them to put 20p in now if they miss the bus, the world is set up for everyone to have mobiles and it’s difficult to get one that works well that isn’t a smartphone. But in handing them that device we actually make them much less safe in many areas.

He was in regular contact with a pedophile - you don't just accidentally meet these people and they send you that sort of material! We are not talking about your bog standard dick pic here - cat A is the worst sort of thing imaginable. He's not an innocent bystander!

Any normal person who was sent this stuff would be straight in the phone to the police. He wasn't. Tells you everything you need to know imo.

I don't think this is the same as a teen being sent 'standard' porn by their dozy mates, but it would be a good idea to talk to our kids about what to do if sent something really nasty because I agree that most would delete it and not necessarily tell their parents/police.

Thank you for sharing that. What a scary situation. It goes to show how important it is to report things like this straight away but I can see how a child or teen wouldn’t want to do that.