Former prominent BBC news anchor gets suspended sentence for indecent images of children on phone

girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to World News@lemmy.world – 102 points – Former prominent BBC news anchor gets suspended sentence for indecent images of children on phone
apnews.com

Former BBC news anchor Huw Edwards, once one of the most prominent media figures in Britain, was given a suspended prison sentence Monday for images of child sexual abuse on his phone.

Edwards, 63, pleaded guilty in Westminster Magistrates’ Court in July to three counts of making indecent images of children, a charge related to photos sent to him on the WhatsApp messaging service by a man convicted of distributing images of child sex abuse.

Edwards’ fall from grace over the past year has caused turmoil for the BBC after it was revealed the publicly funded broadcaster paid him about 200,000 pounds ($263,000) for five months of his salary after he had been arrested in November while on leave. The BBC has asked him to pay it back.

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A 1 year suspended sentence for having hundreds of CP pics on his phone? That's just ridiculously low.

Not sure where you got "hundreds" from. It was 40 that were sent to him by someone else. Plus a bunch of other stuff which wasn't of minors (but obviously age isn't the only criteria for legally or morality, so I'm unsure if the rest was "legit").

He got into trouble because they were offered and whilst he initially declined them, he later changed his mind and accepted them (by saying "go on" after being offered again later on), knowing full well what they were.

And that's where he crossed the line.

He had a great job and reputation over decades of work on TV. Then he goes and does that and destroys everything. Not his smartest move, for sure.

1 is too many..

True, but that's not the point. It'd clearly be unrealistic to equate the crime to things like rape or murder.

The man's obviously sick in the head but at least didn't attack a child irl.

Just plutocracies, doing plutocratic things, because they're plutocracies.

The sentence was a custodial jail sentence. There were just two mitigating factors that downgraded it to a suspended one by a whisker: 1. early guilty plea (in the UK this reduces sentence by a third) and 2. first offense. Typically a first offense under two years would be suspended for anyone.

I knew him for that funny technical difficulties scene. I had no idea he did THAT.

I hate him now.