Huw Edwards’s downfall was of his own making, the chief magistrate, Paul Goldspring, concluded in his sentencing remarks, but that was not the entire picture painted by the BBC star in his interviews with forensic medical experts.
The consultant psychiatrist and neuropsychiatrist Michael Isaac wrote two reports in which the broadcaster’s father, the Welsh academic Hywel Teifi Edwards, who died in 2010, was pinpointed as the source of some of the mental anguish that led to the criminal behaviour of 2020 to 2021.
There was also a reference to a perception of a culture of Oxbridge elitism at the BBC that pushed Edwards, 63, to seek validation on the internet. The presenter received a six-month suspended prison sentence at Westminster magistrates court on Monday after admitting accessing indecent photographs of children as young as seven.
Isaac wrote: “Mr Edwards is a complex individual, with a psychologically challenging upbringing, in which his relationship with his father was particularly challenging and probably damaging psychologically.
“The restrictive, puritanical, but often hypocritical, background of growing up in the particular cultural milieu of south Wales, with a father who was highly regarded and lauded outside the family, but was perceived as behaving monstrously within the family, created both an enduring cognitive dissonance and low self-esteem, compounded by a sense of being inferior (by not getting into Oxford and going to Cardiff instead) and being therefore something of an outsider at the BBC.”
Isaac diagnosed Edwards as suffering from a major depressive disorder without psychotic features. He has also been diagnosed with heart disease, known as arteriosclerosis, which is said to cause erratic behaviour.
According to a report written for the court by the forensic psychosexual therapist Dr Victoria Appleyard, it was social media, and the opportunities it offered for him to engage with people who he would normally never meet, that proved disastrous for the presenter.
Appleyard wrote: “His social media engagement presented as an easy way to manage his low mood and provided him with a number of men and women who were motivated to be sexual with him which not only boosted his fragile self-esteem but allowed him to re-engage with his sexual interest in men which had been managed since 1994.
“The feelings of being desirable and unseen alongside Mr Edwards’ unresolved sexual orientation created a perfect storm where he engaged in sexual infidelities and became vulnerable to people blackmailing him.”
Edwards has been married to the television producer Vicky Flind for 30 years but he described a “deterioration” in their relationship around the time of his offending, at a time when his wife was “experiencing high levels of stress as her mother was nearing end of life”, according to a separate pre-sentence report written for Goldspring.
“Mr Edwards recognises that he was also detached and ‘not present’ at a time when she needed his support,” the report said. “Despite having previously been very close, he recalls this period as the most difficult part of their marriage and their levels of intimacy had significantly decreased.
“Mr Edwards has been keen to stress that he does not consider his bisexuality as permission for infidelity and he expresses high levels of remorse for the betrayal of his partner and children and is aware that he has eroded the trust placed in him.”
Edwards was also critical of his family for not stepping in over his abuse of prescribed medication.
The report added: “He has expressed some disappointment that although family members had commented on these changes, there had not been a greater effort by those around him to challenge him openly about this.
“He asserts that he does not seek to place blame on others for his own failings but he became so entrenched in his own situation and deteriorating mental health, that he was unable to objectively assess and take positive action.”
Edwards’s defence barrister, Philip Evans KC, told the court that it had been Alex Williams, then 19, who had been the driving force behind the criminal activity, by sending the indecent images and video of children. Williams appeared in court in Merthyr Tydfil in January and pleaded guilty to seven offences.
Evans said: “When one looks at the actual facts of this allegation, he did not use his position in order to commit these offences. Alex Williams sought him out, and he sought him out on Instagram at a time when Mr Edwards can probably be described as having been vulnerable.”
The judge said he had taken all of these factors into account, along with the reputational and financial damage inflicted by the conviction, but that it was all a “natural consequence of your behaviour which you brought upon yourself”.
