Huw Edwards identified as suspended BBC presenter
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LONDON — The presenter at the heart of one of the BBC’s biggest crises in years has been identified as Huw Edwards, a TV broadcaster whose distinctive Welsh lilt has been the voice of some of Britain’s most historic moments and who is now facing allegations that he paid for sexually explicit images from a teenager.
According to a statement released Wednesday on his behalf by his wife, Vicky Flind, the BBC news anchor is “suffering from serious mental health issues” and “is now receiving in-patient hospital care where he’ll stay for the foreseeable future.”
The brief statement did not address in any detail the allegations made against Edwards over the past five days. “Once well enough to do so, he intends to respond to the stories that have been published,” his wife said.
She asked for the media to respect the family’s privacy — and added that Edwards “was first told that there were allegations being made against him last Thursday.”
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Edwards is a celebrity news reader and more recognizable on the street than a star footballer. He is famous for his measured delivery — old-school, even a bit dull, a critic might say, but with a voice as comforting as a cup of tea. Like the documentarian David Attenborough, Edwards was seen as a kind of national treasure for the public broadcaster, a jewel in the BBC crown.
When the royal family was gathering at the bedside of Queen Elizabeth II, the BBC determined that it should be Edwards who would narrate the announcement of her death. He wasn’t on duty that day, but was tracked down at a barbershop and told to get ready to go on air in his black suit and tie.
Edwards, 61, is now on the other side of a major news story.
Scotland Yard’s Specialist Crime Command said Wednesday that it had concluded an assessment and found no evidence of a crime committed by Edwards.
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In Britain, it’s illegal to make or possess sexualized images of anyone under 18.
Following the police statement, the BBC said it would continue its own in-house investigation into the matter.
The case has dominated the U.K. media sphere for days with a feverish drip, drip, drip of reporting on its various twists and turns. The BBC news has been live-blogging its own scandal.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak weighed in over the weekend — at a point when his spokesman said the British leader did not know the name of the accused — describing the allegations as “shocking” and “concerning.”
Edwards is one of the public network’s highest-paid stars. He has been a fixture on British television for decades, a throwback to an earlier age when a trusted voice — a British version of Walter Cronkite — was the calm in the middle of the news storms.
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It was Edwards who snagged President Barack Obama’s only U.K. interview in the spring before the Brexit vote. It was Edwards who anchored the royal weddings, the coverage of the queen’s funeral in September and the coronation of King Charles III in May.
And each evening at 10 p.m. — from 2003 until he quietly disappeared this month — he was the silver-haired presence with gravitas in the chair for the BBC’s flagship nightly news program.
The scandal first broke on Friday, when the Sun tabloid reported a mother’s accusations that a male BBC presenter — who was initially not identified, but described variously as a “star” and “household name” — sent her child a total of 35,000 pounds ($45,000) for sexual images since 2020, when the young person was 17. The mother blamed the man and the BBC for funding her child’s use of crack cocaine.
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The BBC said in a statement on Sunday that it “first became aware of a complaint in May,” but that “new allegations were put to us on Thursday of a different nature.”
On Monday, a lawyer representing the young person issued a denial statement, saying “nothing inappropriate or unlawful has taken place between our client and the BBC personality and the allegations reported in the Sun newspaper are rubbish.”
The mother and stepfather stood by their earlier accounts.
On Tuesday, two other young people came forward with complaints about the presenter. One, in their early 20s, told BBC News that the broadcaster had sent them “abusive, expletive-filled messages.” The Sun also reported that a third person, age 23, claimed the presenter broke lockdown rules to meet them during the covid pandemic.
The fresh claims led to other presenters urging Edwards to come forward — to end all the wild speculation about which BBC figure was behind the scandal.
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“These new allegations will result in yet more vitriol being thrown at perfectly innocent colleagues of his. And the BBC, which I’m sure he loves, is on its knees with this,” BBC radio host Jeremy Vine tweeted.
Gone are the days when British newspapers would gleefully name those accused of allegations, without fretting too much about privacy and defamation laws.
The BBC corporation withheld his name, citing privacy protections. The police did not publicly share the name when they began to look into the case. In Britain, police often do not name a suspect until they are detained or charged with a crime.
Edwards has previously spoken about his bouts with depression and said that exercise, in particular boxing, helped with his physical and mental well-being. He documented his fitness and weight loss journey on Instagram — on an account that has since been deleted.
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“I couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t want to go to work. I didn’t want to speak to anybody,” he told the Daily Telegraph of his struggles with depression, which he said started in 2002. “And of course, the issue was you have to maintain a public image, that is — you’re a well-known face. Whenever I had to go live on air, I would literally have to tell myself — come on now, you’ll be okay now. You just have to do it, and I just had to push myself in a way.”
It was arguably his report of the queen’s death that brought him most acclaim. Nearly 10 million people tuned in at 6.30 p.m. when Edwards said that the queen had passed away “peacefully” in Balmoral, Scotland. It was a line he had practiced many times before, reportedly in the bathroom mirror.
Speaking to the Radio Times about that moment, he said: “I was sad. … It was the end of an era in British history, the end of a presence that has been with many people throughout their entire lives.”
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Source: The Washington Post
