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...

@Internationalpony well he plead guilty so obviously he knew what he’d done. Also it can be more nuanced than that; you say no I don’t want it but you stay in the chat knowing these will more than likely be sent or that the ages are vague

The op asked about vulnerability of our kids receiving these pictures unsolicited and the answer is YES they are vulnerable.

Expecting teenagers to “just be responsible” is as ludicrous as expecting the sun to shine at midnight.

I have two absolutely lovely, clever, normal teenage nephews - the older one watches stuff online, just for the shits and giggles. They all do. He is 17 and he encourages/lets his younger brother watch with him. They both love Japanese cartoons and fantasy/sci fi. Whether it’s stupid violent stunts or slightly dubious soft porn … it IS a gateway to more serious and potentially criminal material. And yes they share stuff with friends. They crave excitement and forbidden stuff. They enjoy watching stuff and reacting “oh fuuuu** that’s so grim” . It doesn’t feel real to them, the disassociate like they do when they watch slasher horror movies. It’s entertainments.They are lads, like lads have been for centuries. And yet they have access to dodgy material since they were little kids, it’s nothing like lads have had access to for centuries. And it leads to crime, I would be astonished if they and all their friends have never seem illegal images online.

I do think this is like drugs - you have to tackle the crime syndicates, the dealers, the supply chains (in this case including the online apps that allow this material to proliferate). Trying to stop people receiving these images by making them scared is like trying to push water back into a tap. All the faucets are open and we are being flooded.

not just that, its the failure to instantly report that blew him out of the water.

OP, secondary schools do quite a bit of lessons around sexting and indecent images and how it all works with regards to safeguarding etc. (or all the ones I know of do, I hope they all do!).

I used to work in a high school, a year 9 showed me a video of something happening at a party so I told them that now I'd seen it, I had to go and share that with head of safeguarding. All students get asked who's received it, saved it, sent it on etc. The police are called in quite regularly for that kind of thing. Your DC would be much more screwed if they saved and forwarded it on though. Receiving it, deleting it and not reporting it is what most of them seem to do. But in reality, they should not delete and report to a teacher or adult so the sender can be dealt with.

And now they're creating their own indecent images with AI apps. Using real faces (of their friends/peers) on AI bodies in different pornographic images. All this is also illegal, especially is their underage.

It seems like a minefield on the surface but I think it's pretty clearcut.

And please let’s never forget that paying for images of child sexual abuse means paying someone to abuse a child.

@PurpleMat it’s definitely something that’s worth talking to your teenagers about. Eg. Being 15 year old girl and sending a topless photo to someone implicates the receiver and the sender. This was the number one reason the police would turn up at my last school. They never prosecuted (as far as I know) but it is a proper mare trying to get to the bottom of what’s gone on, especially if images have been shared.

This is another reason my DC will be getting a dumb phone rather than a smart phone.

As per PP, one of my friends has had huge issues with her son's class whatsapp group sending inappropriate material. They are year 7 and the police are now involved. It's very worrying.

You understand WhatsApp has a block function, yes? I can’t believe people are hand wringing for this disgusting nonce.

The images are sent in 1/0 format, they become actual photos once you download them, thats what is meant by ‘making’. If they're not downloaded, they're not ‘made’.

I think the main things I'd do is try to keep up more with the apps and forums they use. I don't use any of them and so I might open snapchat and not see anything untoward but I didn't know how things were stored, I didn't know about the way in which images can be hidden etc.

The police were really helpful in showing me some of the basics.

We are actually quite strict as parents I think. We had a no phones upstairs at night rule, very much limited time on devices etc. I'd already said no to discord (as a result of hearing about it on MN). I'd been quite strict around "online friends" but clearly not strict enough.

At the point at which they went to secondary school we lost control a bit since the school set most homework online and so they need more access to devices. They had to have smart phones since often the school would do things like a quizlet on phones.

I naively encouraged anime since DS1 is quirky and I thought he'd like it. It's a common gateway to hensai. The police were very clear that its problematic for them.

With hindsight I wouldn't have allowed snapchat but it's so difficult when they all have it and it's their main form of communication. We were more strict with DS1 and he ended up with a much more limited friendship group partly as a consequence of this.

I think unfortunately it's just out there. The world has changed from my day when someone in the fifth form might get hold of a porn mag or a dodgy video. Children are being exposed to porn from a very young age.

Stop trying to excuse his behaviour. He's 62 not 82. He should have blocked the sender immediately. But he didn't
He knew what he wanted and he knew where to get them.
He was also known for sniffing around young male BBC Staff. Don't tell me nobody at the beeb knew anything

My interpretation is that he probably is a pedophile in terms of his sexual preference being children. But it’s a choice to act on it and not all pedophiles are sex offenders.

He’s tried to live a normal life but has tried to satisfy his pedophilia by engaging with young people who are over the age of consent but look young which he might feel more morally able to justify to himself. He was using WhatsApp to get porn of people who fit that description not of people who are underage. Of course the person supplying that material also has material of people who are underage and sent some of that too.

HE didn’t report that as he likely felt he was in the wrong by engaging with this person and asking for the other material (even though legal) and as a public figure would have been fearful about being outed. Maybe as a pedophile himself he also had more sympathy for the people who make that material.

I think he was trying to stay the right side of the line but didn’t succeed. Either way, it’s completely wrong, harmful and disgusting.

I'm not entirely sure this is true. He was probably advised by his legal team to plead guilty because receiving images is a crime even if you don't ask for them. So he would have no defence to the crime. By pleading guilty he shows the judge he acknowledges his crime, and so the sentence should be less. There is the added complication that he is famous. So is he being made an example of. Will the judge be strict because of public scrutiny.

Recently going through photos on my laptop and found random (perfectly innocent and legal) picture of my DCs classmate's brother. DC had to tell my who it was. The image was sent initially via Watsapp school group - a mum asked if anyone wanted to attend a family event as her DCs enjoyed it last year and attached a photo with the text. Just me opening the message brought the image with it, automatically saved it to my phone and when I transferred my summer photos to my laptop this random picture went with them. Imagine if that had been illegal porn - technically downloaded, saved, copied and shared! I would have been convicted of making illegal porn and placed on sex offenders register! Scary.

"Making" has both those meanings.

Every time an image is downloaded or sent to another device then you are "making" a new copy of that image. In this situation, "making" is treated as possession for the purposes of sentencing.

On the other hand, production, which is the actual making of the original image at source is treated much more severely.

The starting point for possession of Category A images is one year in prison (although I doubt he'll get that in this case) and the starting point for production is six years in prison.

If you want to access standard pornographic images of adults, there are plenty of legal ways to do this without messaging a convicted paedophile who repeatedly sends you illegal images of children.

Teens and smartphones - it's another reason that teens shouldn't have unmonitored internet usage until they have developed the maturity to navigate difficult situations, and to cope with the psychological risks of being sent unsolicited disturbing content.

It’s not ridiculous, your reply is though. Many people, especially those over 60 don’t use social media. Many celebrities deliberately choose not to. Before you say ‘it’s just a messaging app’, people who don’t do social media, often don’t do messaging apps either. I have an office colleague who is 40s who doesn’t have a smartphone, a 50 year old who just deleted the family WhatsApp, a friend whose only smartphone belongs to his employer and doesn’t do any social media

Don't make excuses
He was talking to a paedophile, that wasn't an accident was it?

My comment clearly says, I doubt that WhatsApp ignorance was the problem in this case. This is red flag behaviour from you

Yes but you used the word “soliciting”. I don’t think staying in a chat and specifically requesting no illegal or underage images are sent in that would be classed as “soliciting” those images. Of course he should have deleted and reported immediately but that’s different to “soliciting” which is essentially asking for or encouraging the images to be sent.

It's simple.

There's an abused child in those photos who can potentially be identified.

Why on earth are you deleting it before reporting it to the police?

What is key is finding out where the images came from and who the victim in them is.

The police won't prosecute if it's not in the public interest to do so. They ultimately want people to report illegal images so they can stop abuse.

If it's kids who are taking pictures of their peers and then sharing to humiliate them then they should be punished too and understand the severity of what's happened. In most cases the police won't prosecute but it will raise the appropriate safeguarding flags and kids will be punished in other ways.

So yeah teach your kids to tell you if they get dodgy images or monitor their usage closely enough so you are aware of what they are recieving.

Good points on here.

In the past I have had some seriously dodgy things sent to me by email. The titles are often innocuous, eg 'Sarah here, how are you?', making them look innocent. I block and delete but there is still evidence on my computer that I received and opened. From memory, none involved pictures of children, thankfully, but of women in various states of undress offering services (& I am a straight woman!) - but they could have shown kids.

I don't get them now, some other junk but no porn, for which I am grateful. I may have changed my settings, I can't remember. However not everything can be filtered out.

Regarding Huw Edwards, we'll have to wait and see what comes out when he is in court.

I do feel sorry for his wife and children, also his friends who never suspected anything. I think I read that his wife, previously very supportive, has now left him.

He received hundreds of images of children over months. That has nothing to do with not being social media savvy.

100%. He's not a Town Cryer. How much technology in a TV studio?

Good old Mumsnet ageism