Former BBC presenter Huw Edwards, once the broadcaster’s star news anchor, has pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent pictures of children.
Edwards admitted during a hearing at London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday that he had received 41 indecent images of children on the messaging platform WhatsApp between December 2020 and August 2021.
The 62-year-old, who was the BBC’s highest-paid journalist, faces a maximum prison sentence of 10 years and a minimum of 12 months.
Judge Paul Goldspring said Edwards would be sentenced on September 16, and that “all options”, including an immediate prison sentence, would be considered.
During the 25-minute hearing, prosecutor Ian Hope said Edwards had been sent a total of 377 sexually explicit images by an adult male on WhatsApp – 41 of these were considered indecent, illegal images of children.
Seven of the 41 images were of the most serious kind, two of which were pornographic videos of a child possibly aged between seven and nine years.
Edwards’s lawyer Philip Evans emphasised that the charges to which his client had indicated guilty pleas related only to images that were sent to him via WhatsApp.
“There is no suggestion in this case that Mr Edwards has in any way made, in the traditional sense of the word, any images in any physical way or created any images of any sort,” Evans said.
Edwards resigned from the BBC in April on “medical advice”, six months after he was arrested following allegations he had paid a young person thousands of pounds for sexually explicit photos.
He was a household name in Britain for more than two decades, announcing the death of Queen Elizabeth to the nation in 2022 and leading coverage of elections, royal weddings and the 2012 Olympics.
He made no comment as he left the court building.
