Huw Edwards given suspended sentence

[RaspberryParade]

"The former BBC presenter Huw Edwards has been given a six-month suspended prison sentence, completing an extraordinary fall from grace after admitting accessing indecent photographs of children as young as seven.
Edwards, 63, who spent four decades at the BBC, looked pale and tired in the dock at Westminster magistrates court as the chief magistrate, Paul Goldspring, handed down the sentence.

Edwards, who nodded at various points during the sentencing remarks, was told that he had been “perhaps the most recognised newsreader/journalist in the UK” but that his “long-earned reputation is in tatters”.
His six-month prison sentence will be suspended for two years and he will be obliged to attend a 40-day programme designed to stop him offending again. He pleaded guilty to three charges of making indecent images of children after he was sent 41 illegal images by Alex Williams, a convicted paedophile."
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/sep/16/huw-edwards-in-court-after-admitting-accessing-indecent-images-of-children

Why wasn't he tried in Crown Court?

You may be right but there's a big problem with thus.

People that look at images like that, especially given the number, aren't going to stop there. At some point, they will probably escalate. This sentence assumes that a scare factor will be enough rather than the fact paedophilia is a compulsion and people who are, need to be kept away from more vulnerable members of society.

So people considered far right who wrote nasty stuff on Facebook get 2 years in jail yet a man who seemingly paid for a video of a 7-9 year old boy being raped by an adult is given a 6 months suspended sentence……..what an utter disgrace. IMHO it proves that paying good lawyers is the way to avoid justice.

Also I wonder who the lawyer for the distributor of the images and videos was and who paid their invoice? Has any investigative journalist looked at that? The Welsh guy who distributed them also got a suspended sentence so Huw Edwards sentence wasn’t unexpected.

He asked not to be sent underage images but that was only partially accepted, because he did not make that request at the beginning

https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/unduly-lenient-sentences

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/unduly-lenient-sentence-scheme/

This is only for Crown Court? Can one not appeal a magistrate court sentence?

Other more knowledgeable posters than me have said in other threads that paedophiles know to put this in writing in a message so they can show it as proof later. The sender and recipient both know they don’t mean it.

What really boils my piss is the fact that I serve a life sentence knowing there are photos of 7 year old me out there somewhere. I don't know where they went, how many people saw them, whether they were copied, put online eventually. I don't get to know any of that and have to live with the fact that those photos were taken and existed, may still exist, for perverts like this fucking arsehole to get their rocks off to.

And he gets a fucking suspended sentence.

And I'll add I don't give a fuck about his childhood trauma. My childhood trauma didn't make me go out and procure and make sex abuse images of children.

It's wrong. So fucking wrong.

Ok. Interesting. He has, though, been assessed by a consultant psychiatrist and by a forensic psychosexual therapist

So if the argument is his childhood trauma made him do it, what is going to change? The course they're making him go on won't take away the trauma. What, it's going to teach a highly educated, clearly not stupid person, who has presumably covered the impact of this type of crime over the course of his career as a journalist that paedophilia harms children? Because at his age and with his life experience he needs to be told that?!

I really do feel for everyone who suffers trauma as a child but there is always a choice. And if there really isn't a choice, because it is a compulsion he can't control, then he clearly isn't safe to be around children and I can't see that changing based on a short course and a seven year wait.

Beetle sending you a hug.

So if the argument is his childhood trauma made him do it, what is going to change?

And I'd like to know, if childhood trauma makes someone view CSA images, then where are all the female sex offenders? Why is it overwhelmingly men?

Correct in the power/opinion of (probably bribed) white men.

Not anyone with a basic sense of morals.

Only 7 years on the sex offenders’ register too. Does he cease to be a nonce after 7 years? Does he cease to have internet access after 7 years?

The UK - a country that almost encourages shameless dirty old men

The thing that I've been most struck by in these threads is how CSA is minimised, on another thread someone mentioned a "minor offense"

How is this OK (by the law) that he - and the person that sent the pictures - (and probably thpusands of others) got such woefully minimal sentences?

Yet someone who posted racist comments on social media was served time. I don't agree with either offence but it seems ridiculous this man is essentially walking away with a slap on the wrist for the most heinous crime whilst someone who committed something so much less serious was sent to prison. Bonkers, what is the justice system in this country playing at.

the only cold comfort in all this is that (given some people recently got banged up for years for posting dubious sentiments on Facebook, but Edwards gets to walk despite his crimes) he will spend the rest of his days as a total pariah, looking over his shoulder, forever. That's not going to do much for your mental health now, is it? Shame.

I've read the defence mitigation and he is blaming everyone else. He's taking no responsibility whatsoever. Having a traumatic childhood is not an excuse for this type of offence. Then he blames his wife for not being sexually responsive to him whilst her mother was dying.

Sadly the sentence is in line with the tariff. I think the tariff is wrong and that he - along with everyone else committing CSA offences - should be in prison.

Your social values and sentencing guidelines rather than freemasonry. Did you pay attention to what Penny Mordaunt's perp brother got for trying to meet up with minors for sex?

I think the sentence is very lenient, though typical for this kind of offence. Sadly, there are tens of thousands of men arrested for this kind of offence every year - perhaps the authorities work on the basis that there isn’t enough jail space for all of them.

There’s too many of these men to lock up. Maybe we could send them to a remote, uninhabited island without internet access and just leave them there.

A very much former friend got a suspended sentence for 1700 images including the torture of toddlers. Like HE, he got credit for it being his first offence, an early guilty plea, and remorse. Although the remorse didn’t stop it him in the decades he was looking at this stuff…

So I am not surprised by this.

I know the courts tend to try and avoid sending people to prison for first offences, because they come out more likely to reoffend. So I can grudgingly get on board with that, IF there are robust community measures to reduce the chance of reoffending. Sadly I am sceptical that much actually works.

Assuming that is a verified diagnosis of (presumably cerebral) small vessel disease (SVD), it may be fairly difficult for him to have insight into his actions (at some odds with other trial material but mentioned in sentencing remarks).

I have read the Neuropsychiatric Report prepared by Dr Issac and do not intend to repeat the information contained within that report but note the comments relating to the impact of his diagnosed mental health problems at the time of the offences; "The overarching diagnosis is major depressive disorder, moderate, recurrent, without psychotic features". Additionally, he has been diagnosed with small vessel disease (arteriosclerosis) which is described as cognitive disorder with behavioural disturbance. "The qualifier 'with behavioural disturbance' reflects changes in Mr Edwards' behaviour, but in my view fed into his overall judgment and capacity to make decisions, mainly because of the development of his mood disorder, but compounded by the presence of the neurocognitive disorder, from 2018 and well established by the material time at the end of 2020. This condition will have reduced Mr Edwards' cognitive reserve, rendering him more vulnerable to the adverse cognitive effects of alcohol.
Since approximately 2018, both of these conditions (neurocognitive disorder and mood disorder) are more likely than not to have impaired Mr Edwards' decision making and judgment, including his ability to comply with management instructions, reducing his normal inhibition and becoming 'stuck' in behaviours, such as obsessive messaging, whether appropriate or not, but at the same time detached from his communication, in that he would either forget what he had said or do so on a kind of 'autopilot,' without any real judgment of how such communications might be perceived or his actions impact on others." (Dr Isaac, 28/08/2024)

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/EDWARDS-SENTENCE-REMARKS-FINAL.pdf

The corollary is that it may well be fairly tricky to supervise him and his actions in the community. This would be worsened by his tendency to blame others for his actions albeit this is hard to disentangle from behaviour-as-usual for paedophiles, the entitlement of men in the public eye, and the SVD.

The excellent SEEN in journalism twitter account linked this article below reporting on the work of the Sentencing Council that, back when Starmer was the DPP, formulated new guidelines related to 50 different sex offences. They decided that 8 offences where the principal victim is a child could be dealt with as community orders rather than prison sentences! Including 'sexual assault of a child under 13' to 'possession of an indecent photograph of a child' to 'paying for the sexual services of a child' and 'arranging or facilitating the sexual exploitation of a child'.

https://x.com/JournalismSEEN/status/1835739682438558096

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11958253/Keir-Starmer-present-meetings-decided-not-sex-offenders-prison.html

The Mail's take on this is that Starmer was fully in favour of these changes as he attended most of the meetings and raised no concerns. I'm concerned that some of the numerous predatory males in the judiciary, the CPS and a variety of organisations were able to use the consultation and exert their influence in order to remove some child sex offences from deserving prison sentences.

As we wonder why Edwards and other paedophiles are repeatedly released back into the community, it looks as if the Sentencing Council and their lack of concern for the safety of children from predators may be responsible?

After everything that has happened, anyone still paying the license fee has no one to blame but themselves.