The younger man whose communications with former information anchor Huw Edwards started the autumn from grace of one of many BBC’s finest identified faces, has damaged his silence and given his first interview – detailing how he felt he was groomed and exploited by Edwards, and that on one event his mother and father pretended to be him to rearrange a meet-up, and videoed the presenter arriving on the rendezvous.
The man, now 21, has not been named in his interview with the UK’s Mirror newspaper. Within the interview, he particulars:
- He was aged 17 and sleeping tough, having fallen out together with his mother and father when he first messaged the high-profile information anchor. He says that Edwards then deposited some cash in his PayPal account, however what began as a friendship quickly modified in tone: “He knew I wanted the cash. I felt like I used to be being groomed.”
- The person admits sending X-rated messages and movies to the previous information anchor, whom he says he appeared as much as due to his exalted standing. Edwards was the BBC’s premier newscaster, trusted with asserting HM Queen Elizabeth’s demise in September 2022 and helming a list of high-profile dwell occasions together with the Queen’s funeral, King Charles’s Coronation and several other Common Elections, in a profession of fifty years on the BBC.
- Edwards gave the person as much as £35,000 for indecent photos over a interval of two years, an association that was curtailed when the then teenager’s mom discovered the photographs on her son’s cellphone. This was the account detailed when The Solar newspaper first printed the allegations in July 2023.
- When his mother and father complained to the BBC and went to The Solar, Edwards was livid, and the younger man tried to guard him by denying something untoward had occurred.
The younger man’s account to The Mirror newspaper backs up all of the allegations made by The Solar final summer season. The newspaper initially didn’t title the broadcaster concerned within the story, however Edwards’ spouse subsequently recognized him, and stated he was receiving hospital care after “a critical psychological well being episode.”
Edwards was suspended by the BBC final summer season pending investigation, and it has now transpired that he was arrested in November over a separate investigation into having photos of underage abuse on his cellphone. He was subsequently charged with three counts of constructing indecent photos of kids, resigned from the BBC in April and entered a responsible plea in courtroom this week. Sentencing will happen in September.
The BBC’s director-general Tim Davie this week defended the way the BBC had behaved in its treatment of Edwards, together with an enormous pay rise relationship again to April 2023, cash he acquired till his resignation a 12 months later. Edwards’ wage enhance was commonplace and in keeping with BBC coverage, however the truth he labored so little after his suspension in June and now his full shame has raised inevitable indignation about what number of UK residents’ BBC licence charges went into his pocket in that point.
