A teenager who Huw Edwards allegedly paid for explicit photos has said he felt “groomed” by the disgraced newsreader and “sick” after learning he was charged with having indecent images of children.
Earlier this week, the veteran broadcaster, who it emerged had been arrested last November, pleaded guilty to having images of children as young as seven when he was still at the BBC.
His court appearance came a year after he was named as the presenter at the centre of claims of paying a young person for sexually explicit photos.
Police found no evidence of criminal behaviour in relation to this separate matter.
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Huw Edwards pleads guilty
Edwards resigned from the BBC in April this year during a confidential disciplinary process “on the basis of medical advice from his doctors”.
The unnamed young man told the Mirror newspaper he “stayed silent for so long to protect Huw”, but following news of the presenter’s court appearance said: “I feel sick at what has happened”.
He said he first contacted the 62-year-old newsreader for help, among other celebrities, having spent a few nights at a homeless shelter.
“Although it was a friendship at the beginning, it did change. He would say things like, ‘Are you going to do something for me then?’ I needed help, so I did.
“I feel like he sort of fed on my vulnerability… as he knew I needed the money. I felt like I was being groomed.”
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The young man admitted sending explicit messages and videos to Edwards, who is alleged to have sent £35,000 in return over two years.
“Because of who he was as a BBC presenter and because he had such power… I felt like I trusted him and that he cared,” the young man said.
“But that’s how the manipulation started. I looked up to this man, but he didn’t really care about me.
“I felt like he was taking advantage of me, but I felt I had to listen to him because he was Huw Edwards.”
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Who is the paedophile who sent Edwards images?
The family of the unnamed young person originally complained to the BBC about Edwards in May 2023, and he was publicly named by his wife as the TV presenter at the centre of the allegations two months later, in July.
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‘Huw Edwards ought to return his salary’
The young man revealed Edwards had contacted him again via text last October from an unknown number.
He said: “I think it was about two weeks before he got arrested. The message said ‘guess who’ or something like that.
“The message said, ‘Don’t say my name on here… just call me’. So I phoned him and he said download the messaging app Signal. And he said we can catch up on there.
“He said, ‘What’s been going on? I really care about you’. He had no remorse for anything at all.”
Before Edwards quit, he was the broadcaster’s highest-paid newsreader, earning almost £480,0000, according to the BBC’s latest annual report.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy urged the disgraced newsreader to “return his salary” and asked the BBC to look into whether it can recoup an estimated £200,000, which Edwards earned during the period from his arrest in November until his resignation in April.
Ms Nandy told Sky News: “I think having been arrested on such serious charges all the way back in November, to continue to receive that salary all the way through until he resigned is wrong and it’s not a good use of taxpayers’ money.
“I think most people in the country will agree with that, but whether he does that or not is up to him.”
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Artist spray-paints over Huw Edwards mural
Meanwhile, the corporation’s director-general Tim Davie has defended Edwards’ pay rise last year of £40,000.
He told BBC News it was made up of an “inflationary increase”, and work the news anchor did at the corporation in February 2023 before any allegations were made.
A mural of Edwards in his home town of Llangennech, Carmarthenshire, has been painted over by artist Steve Jenkins, who described it as “such a bitter pill to swallow”.
Edwards will next appear in court on 16 September.