Huw Edwards makes bombshell statement on child sex | UK News

Huw Edwards has spoken out about his child sex offences two years after he was convicted of three fees of making indecent photographs of kids. The court heard that the disgraced BBC News presenter obtained 41 unlawful photographs, including seven class A footage, via WhatsApp from a convicted sex offender. In September 2024, he obtained a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years and was positioned on the sex offenders’ register for seven years.

Now, the veteran broadcaster has spoken out for the first time since he pled guilty, on his new Substack weblog. In his latest post, titled “On Hatred,” he shared his expertise of receiving hate messages from trolls on

He started: “For the record, I am not a child rapist. Child sex offences are serious crimes. Those crimes cover a broad spectrum of criminality. All child sex crimes are appalling, and some are far worse than others.

“In my case, a three-month forensic examination of my mobiles, computer systems and storage devices discovered not a single unlawful image. A survey of my web searches discovered nothing illegal. My crime was to click on on recordsdata despatched to me by another person.”

The broadcaster went on to label the legal terminology for his crime as “deceptive”, insisting he was simply “accessing an image”. Mr Edwards went on: “It is completely regular to hate a crime which entails the abuse of kids. I’ve written beforehand about the sense of abhorrence I really feel about these crimes.

“It is the failure to separate the crime from the perpetrator which fuels mindless hatred – a hatred which impedes society’s ability to understand why some people behave in ways that are destructive and shameful.”

The former newsreader went on to reveal that he’ll clarify his “reasons for pleading guilty” in a future post once his conviction turns into spent on September 16. But he teased: “The criminal justice system – whatever police or prosecutors say – tends not to make meaningful allowances for people whose crimes were committed when they were mentally impaired.”

Addressing the hate messages he receives online, he added that the overwhelming backlash is “an indicator of the quality of public discourse in today’s UK.” He contemplated: “More significantly, it tells us about people’s capacity and willingness to pause, listen and try to work out if their reflex hatred is justified.”