Considering how often their profession is associated with venality, it seems only fair to record occasions when lawyers go out of their way, entirely unpaid, to maintain public confidence in the administration of justice.
They were generous last week following the result of Rex v Huw Edwards, in explaining, basically, that the public should not get too exercised: his treatment was standard, not two-tier, absolutely in line with the official guidelines, even, one expert suggested, given the number of (known) images, on the high side. The hope being, presumably, that if the public can be made to understand the sentencing process, it can be persuaded to accept the outcome. On this occasion the signs, including in the most liberal spaces, are not promising.
Maybe next time such a sentence causes controversy, the sentence-explainers could entertain the possibility that the calculations that delivered it are not so much a source of bafflement to people, as the reason for their disgust. After all too many similar cases, much of the public may have been more disapproving than amazed to learn that after he pleaded guilty to viewing child sex abuse material Edwards’s tariff was reduced, with mitigations, to a six-month suspended sentence and a sex offender treatment programme.
There were protests, even before his case was added to the list, that repeated, lenient-looking sentences for viewing images of sex abuse fail to signal the seriousness of this crime, such that they risk contributing to its shocking prevalence and, it follows, to the sexual abuse of children that supplies it. Police data from 2022-23 shows a 25% rise in child abuse image offences in the UK. Is it time, now that the distribution of sex abuse images has become an epidemic, to look again at sentencing guidelines last reviewed in 2012? Demand, already surging, accelerated during the pandemic: the same period, it now emerges, that Edwards, a father of five, was sending messages saying “go on”, to the sex offender offering him images.
All which arguably deserves a more thoughtful response than: the judge was right.
Not that it helps professionals arguing the flawlessness of the Edwards tariff that whole passages of chief magistrate Paul Goldspring’s sentencing remarks could have been calculated, like some satire on judicial susceptibility, to promote cynicism about the sentencing of sex offenders. He believes the medical evidence that Edwards has no memory of the crimes. And in what deserves to become an immortal passage in the annals of mitigation, Goldspring quotes under “material considered” a consultant psychiatrist’s report that Edwards’s low self-esteem – apparently contributing to his offending conduct – was “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”. The kind of outsider who was in 2019 selected to replace David Dimbleby as the BBC’s general election presenter. Before long, as we know, it fell to the Oxbridge failure to become a quasi-religious presence at great national rituals, a contrast he mentioned, fairly pointedly, in a 2023 speech about overcoming setbacks. “I have the scholarly giants of Oxford to thank for the fact that I’ve been a dazzling success… as a journalist”.
Returning to the timeline, we find that Edwards was presenting coverage of Prince Philip’s funeral, in April 2021, in the same period that he was in contact with the sex offender offering abuse images. Alas, his funeral coverage is “not currently available”, but Edwards supplied in a Spectator diary a full account of his preparations: “Ahead of these great ceremonial occasions, I love the solitary rituals of reading and revising.” He went on to present the Queen’s funeral, and (with Kirsty Young, who skipped university) Charles’s coronation.
Admittedly I can’t be sure, as a court outsider, that not getting into Oxford isn’t a familiar topic in criminal proceedings, cited for its salience in everything from shoplifting to participation in a riot. Maybe the sentencing authorities have devised a scientific, failed-application-to-university-of-choice system of tariff adjustment, with reductions awarded per institution, regularly reviewed to take into account of the fluctuating league tables. Not forgetting individual judicial preference. One judge might be moved to compassion when reviewing medical reports by non-admission to Christ Church, another could consider Rada the only institution likely to leave lasting scars on a failed applicant.
Do judges ever use Google when evaluating psychological reports? Maybe it’s not allowed, otherwise the chief magistrate might, when the psychiatrist got to the legacy of Edwards’s late father, “perceived” in the quoted passage, “as behaving monstrously within the family”, have compared this with a much warmer account from 2022. In a 60th birthday television tribute, Edwards described him as “very sharp-tongued at times”, but always supportive of his career: “He would always say that the fact an English establishment were relying on me – a Welsh-speaker, to navigate some of the biggest reports of the world was something to be proud of.”
Mercifully for the posthumous reputation of Edwards senior, others are shown to share responsibility for his son’s downfall. “Intimacy” the chief magistrate quotes, from a report that mentions Edwards’s marriage, “had significantly decreased”. The presenter also expressed disappointment “that there had not been a greater effort by those around him”, when his use of prescribed medication needed challenging. By what judicial alchemy this litany of excuses – dad, Oxford, BBC, wife, family – appears to become compatible with “remorse”, another mitigation for repeatedly viewing indecent images of children, may elude the comprehension of anyone who has never completed a law conversion course.
The legal professionals are right: judgments like this really do need explaining. Otherwise the lay public could easily get the impression that the main deterrent to viewers of child sex abuse is the chance of public disgrace. And the fall of Huw Edwards shows us how effective that can be.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk
• This article was amended on 23 September 2024. The Oxford college is Christ Church, rather than Christchurch as an earlier version said.
