Huw Edwards’s conviction on possession of indecent images of children is a lurid tale of exploitation, sexual and economic, and a pattern of exploitative behaviour, culminating in consumption of paedophile material, some of it of the most serious kind.
It leaves a trail of victims, names we will never know, deployed in the online underworld as objects of sick gratification, collateral damage in a squalid trade. There’s a trail of damage too towards a loyal wife and family. And it’s scorched earth at the BBC, where colleagues appeared frozen in indecision about how to deal with a famous face who they knew to be indulging in reckless behaviour. There were more red flags than on a Moscow May Day — an “investigations unit” contacted by relatives of a young man whom they claimed (rightly) was being paid for sexual images failed to pass on the information.
