Former BBC news presenter Huw Edwards has been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment suspended for two years by a London court for having indecent images of children, according to PA Media.
The suspended sentence comes with requirements including the completion of a sex offender treatment program and 25 rehabilitation sessions.
Edwards, who was the BBC’s highest-paid journalist, pleaded guilty in July to having 41 indecent images of children.
Chief magistrate Paul Goldspring said while sentencing Edwards that it was “obvious” that the journalist was “very highly regarded by the public” until information about his crimes became public.
“It is not an exaggeration to say your long-earned reputation is in tatters,” the magistrate said.
The court had previously heard that Edwards had engaged in online chat with an adult man on WhatsApp, who sent him 377 sexual images, 41 of which were indecent images of children.
The adult man who sent Edwards the images is a convicted pedophile, the court heard on Monday. Edwards sent him hundreds of pounds “apparently off the back of (him) sending pornographic images,” prosecutor Ian Hope said.
Defense barrister Philip Evans KC said that the journalist “did not make payments in order for images to be sent to him, and he certainly did not make payments in order that indecent images would be sent to him.”
Seven of the images shared with Edwards were of the most serious type of indecent images of children under English law. Most of the children featured in them were estimated to be between 13 and 15 years old. One child was aged between seven and nine.
