Here we go again! Another celebrity [remember my piece on Katie Price?] comes before the courts, magistrates court that is, charged with a serious crime, and is basically let off. Huw Edwards. That’s who we are talking about just now. That doyen of the great British Broadcasting Corporation who, whilst married, paid a male teenager thousands of pounds for explicit sexual images of himself and he didn’t stop there: he even arranged to meet this teenager in person until he was chased at a railway station by the teenager’s stepfather.
How is it that Huw Edwards (in a separate and unrelated case) was later charged and pled guilty to making sickening category A indecent images – the most severe type – of children, some as young as seven – Walks. Free. From. Court.
All along we the public were told (by those who are supposed to know these things) that such charges carried up to three years in jail. But guess what? The chief magistrate (whatever his name is) certainly did not think this doyen of the British Broadcasting Corporation had any business being in jail. So, he sent him home. Well, he (laughingly) sentenced Huw Edwards to six months custody, suspended for two years. Thereby telling the world and his dog that this offence of Huw Edwards is not that bad really. Huw Edwards ‘knew’ he would get off. Even though he made some show of coming to court with an overnight bag, he jolly well knew there was fat chance of him going to prison on the 15th of September 2024.
Did you see how arrogant, defiant and confident he looked every time he walked into court? And did you also see how smug he looked on the way out, still expected to be viewed as a television star?
So why wasn’t Huw Edwards, convicted sex offender, not given an immediate custodial sentence? Well, let’s see now. Ah yes. He’s got an inferiority complex because he failed to get into Oxford or Cambridge Universities. To say Huw Edwards has an inferiority complex is risible. There was no sign of inferiority when he graced our TV screens with the biggest news of the day.
Then there’s his father. By all accounts, portrayed in court as a ‘monster’. And that Edwards being brought up in Bridgend, South Wales didn’t help. Then there are his physical and mental health issues. He looked perfectly OK to me on TV. Funny how this became an issue and the first we heard about this was after he got caught. And as for forensic psychosexual therapist Dr Victoria Appleyard who asserts that there was a ‘tangible risk’ that Edwards would attempt suicide given his life had been irretrievably damaged – well, this wasn’t something that happened to Huw Edwards: this was something he brought on himself. Pardon me – but there’s no mention that he had attempted suicide since July 2023 when all this came to light. And how much are the medical experts being paid to say that Edwards wouldn’t do well in prison (in all my years working in the legal and criminal justice system, the convicted was never sent to prison to ‘do well’)? They state that he would be ‘exceptionally vulnerable’ due to him being ‘of public prominence’ and the nature of his crime. Money certainly talks!
Furthermore, the chief magistrate said that Edwards did not pose a risk to the public or children. Not pose a risk to the public? Not pose a risk to children? Er, was this chief magistrate in the courtroom when the case was being heard? And all the fawning chief magistrate, blinded by Edwards’s status, could say to this felon, is that his reputation is in tatters. Pass the Kleenex!
Even his defence counsel Philip Evans KC pointed out to the court that ‘it is obvious [he is sure] that Huw Edwards is not just of good character but of exceptional character’. Come again! I’d be hard-pressed to describe a married man with five children as being of ‘exceptional character’ after he has been paying a male teenager large sums of money for sexually explicit photos (which are not in dispute). Or for that matter, a 63-year-old married man who indulged in immoral and unlawful sexual interest in children. A man who had betrayed his colleagues and his employers. As for Edwards being ‘truly sorry’, don’t make me laugh. That’s what his high-price lawyers are paid to say.
I tell you what. If he wasn’t still taking that fat paycheck from the great British Broadcasting Corporation, even after he was suspended, he would not have been able to afford the likes of Philip Evans KC. As the saying goes – he gamed the system.
