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Our lenient judges need to understand that looking at vile pictures of children like Huw Edwards did is serious abuse, writes JULIE BINDEL By Julie Bindel For The Daily Mail Published: 01:48, 17 September 2024 | Updated: 01:54, 17 September 2024 e-mail View comments Not long ago, I spoke to a woman whose father was a prolific child abuser. To spare you nightmares, I won’t go into the sickening details of what he forced her to endure, other than to say that he liked to invite other men to take photographs of the abuse, that they could then, in the pre-internet era, sell on for profit. Such depravity almost beggars belief doesn’t it? Even in an age now dominated by the ready availability of every form of pornography via the internet, most of us try to tell ourselves that such things only happen on the very margins of our society.
Alas, as a campaigner against sexual violence, I know differently – and all the heartbreaking stories I have heard over the years from the victims of child abuse immediately flooded into my mind when I learned that the former BBC news presenter Huw Edwards had been given a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to making indecent images of children. Huw Edwards leaves court yesterday with a suitcase, which he won't now need ‘Indecent’ is the word used in the legal definition of the crime, of course. I would use others to describe the dozens of images that the 63-year-old paid to receive – many of which were categorised by the police who found them on his computer as of the ‘worst’ kind, meaning they showed sadistic abuse of minors.
Not so much ‘indecent’ as degrading, debasing and thoroughly horrifying. And yet, nonetheless, apparently not serious enough to warrant a custodial sentence. Read More EXCLUSIVE Fury at the BBC as Huw Edwards avoids jail: Ex-colleagues condemn shamed newsreader It makes me furious.
The files Edwards looked at show children – abused by the sick individual who created the image in the first place, then doomed to be abused time and time again by the anonymous men, and it is usually men, around the globe deriving pleasure from those pictures. These men may not have been present when the abuse was carried out, but they are facilitating it; part of the grim carousel of supply and demand in which Huw Edwards has played his loathsome part. Nonetheless, there appears to be a disconnect in the minds of our judiciary, who, it seems to me, do not see the exchange of images as ‘real’ abuse.
Time and again, those convicted of possession or sharing of ‘indecent’ images escape prison. Only last August, Labour councillor Tom Dewey – found by a National Crime Agency investigation to have downloaded more than 1,500 images involving the sexual abuse of children – was given a 12-month suspended sentence. In March, Alex Williams, the 25-year-old paedophile who supplied Edwards with his images, was also given a 12-month suspended sentence after pleading guilty to possession and supply offences.
Julie Bindel has heard heartbreaking stories over the years from the victims of child abuse I could go on: I’ve seen so many men involved in this heinous illegality walk out of the doors of court while their victims are condemned to have images of themselves on the internet for ever. Where is the deterrent for other abusers when a man with a public profile like that of Huw Edwards is seen walking out of court effectively a free man, his ‘punishment’ a sex offenders’ course that I will warrant is entirely meaningless. Yes, our prisons are overcrowded and our justice system on its knees.
But in a world where the sexual exploitation of children online is nothing less than a public health emergency – research by the child safety institute Childlight estimates that in the UK alone 1.8million people are involved in this hideous industry and that it affects more than 300million children globally every year – this crime, surely, deserves a jail term. Perhaps Paul Goldspring, the Chief Magistrate for England and Wales, should have had those distressing numbers in his head when Edwards appeared before him in the dock.
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