A London court has now reportedly sentenced former BBC news anchor Huw Edwards to six months of imprisonment, with the sentence suspended for two years, after he paid a pedophile who sent him indecent images of children.
Edwards, who was previously the highest-paid journalist on the BBC’s roster and was widely considered the face of the broadcasting corporation’s news operation in the UK, served as the primary presenter on the BBC News at Six and the BBC’s flagship News at Ten.
The disgraced journalist is also required to complete 25 rehabilitation sessions and a sex offender treatment program in addition to the suspended sentence.
A man was jailed for three years for social media posts, while Huw Edwards gets a suspended sentence for soliciting child sexual abuse material.
— Samantha Smith (@SamanthaTaghoy) September 16, 2024
The UK justice system is broken. pic.twitter.com/ol1MfaMJEt
In July, Edwards entered a plea of guilty to possessing 41 indecent images of children that were transmitted during online conversations with a convicted pedophile on WhatsApp.
The man sent him a total of 377 sexual images between December 2020 and August 2021, some of which featured minors as young as seven.
The most severe classification of material was assigned to seven of the images that were shared.
Edwards was suspended in July 2023 when allegations regarding his conduct first surfaced. However, he continued to receive $264,000 from the publicly-funded broadcaster while investigations were ongoing.
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