Whatever else we can say about the BBC presenter allegations – and at the moment, there is a great deal that remains unknown – it is clear that the story is a lot more complicated than initial reports suggested.
Since Friday evening, when the Sun newspaper – owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News UK – first published allegations that a “household name” had paid thousands of pounds to a 17-year-old in return for sexual photos, the story has dominated headlines, convulsed social media and even drawn in the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who called the claims “very serious and concerning”.
What are the allegations?
Days later, the intense scrutiny of the story has merely thrown up more questions.
Did a TV star solicit sexual images of a child, as the Sun’s initial report suggested? Did the BBC brush aside complaints about the presenter’s behaviour from a concerned family member? Or is the Sun’s initial report, as the young person said on Monday through their lawyer, “rubbish”?
On Tuesday, the BBC – which as the UK’s public service broadcaster faces extra scrutiny – released a full timeline. Its account fills out some of the picture but leaves a lot unanswered.
The presenter is now facing a range of new accusations from three other young people he is alleged to have met on dating sites, including a claim from one person that the BBC man broke Covid lockdown rules to meet up with them, and others that he sent threatening or “creepy” messages.
It has led one BBC colleague, Jeremy Vine, to call on the presenter to name himself to stop “yet more vitriol being thrown at perfectly innocent colleagues of his”, and to save the BBC, which Vine said was “on its knees”.
How has the story unfolded?
A household name in the UK is accused of behaviour that lawyers say could amount to soliciting sexual images of a child, an offence that could lead to imprisonment. Although the age of consent for sexual activity in England and Wales is 16 years old, the law on indecent images treats all under-18s as children.
According to the Sun, the unnamed presenter paid tens of thousands of pounds to a young person to provide explicit photographs. It has been claimed that communications between the two started when the young person was 17. They are now 20.
When the young person’s family complained, their mother suggested to the Sun that the BBC did not take the allegations seriously enough.
It has led to heated criticism of the BBC and, inevitably, wild social media speculation – meaning a torrid few days for fellow presenters subjected to false accusations (“a distressing weekend”, as a BBC radio host, Nicky Campbell, put it).
On Monday, the situation was turned on its head when the young person concerned flatly denied the Sun’s original story, saying “nothing illegal or inappropriate” had taken place.
New allegations
By Wednesday, the presenter was facing further allegations. One young person in their early 20s told the BBC on Tuesday they had felt threatened by the male presenter after he approached them anonymously on a dating app. They did not meet in person, but when the young person threatened to name him publicly, the presenter allegedly sent “abusive, expletive-filled” messages, the person claimed.
In a separate case, the Sun has published allegations from another person that the star, whom they said they had met on a dating app, broke the rules of the third national Covid lockdown in February 2021 to visit them at their flat and gave them money.
And a fourth person told the newspaper the presenter had started a “creepy” Instagram chat with them when they were 17.
Both the BBC and the Sun said they had approached the presenter for comment.
What the BBC says
The BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, said on Tuesday that this was “a very difficult and complex situation”.
The corporation was juggling serious allegations of misconduct and potential criminality, the duty of care it owes its employees, the law on privacy, and legitimate public interest, Davie said, all of which limits what the BBC can say at this stage.
According to the broadcaster, it was first alerted to the allegations when a family member walked into a BBC building on 18 May. That person made a complaint the following day, which was immediately referred to the internal corporate investigations team.
Davie told reporters the BBC received many complaints of this sort – about 250 in a six-month period – and the specialist team tried to verify them before they were escalated.
The BBC has not confirmed what the initial accusations were, though it has said they were “different” to those alleged in the Sun. Crucially, the BBC said the allegations it received “did not include an allegation of criminality, but nonetheless merited further investigation”. As a result, police were not informed.
The family member was emailed on 19 May and there was a single attempt to phone them on 6 June but “this call did not connect”. It was not until 6 July, when the Sun first contacted the BBC, that Davie was alerted, and a senior manager spoke to the presenter.
Davie was asked on Tuesday: did the presenter deny the allegations? “I’m not going to get into the specific conversations with the presenter,” he replied.
What questions are there for the BBC?
Davie said he believed he had handled the matter “calmly and judiciously”, while the BBC had “[made] the right calls”.
However, he acknowledged that there may be lessons to be learned over the internal handling of the complaint, specifically whether an email and a single attempt at a phone call, 18 days later, amounted to enough effort to verify the claims.
He said he had asked the BBC’s group chief operating officer to look into its internal protocols and report to the BBC board.
The young person’s family, meanwhile, stand by their account.
What other questions are there?
The BBC had paused its internal investigation at the request of London’s Metropolitan police, who were looking to “scope future work”, Davie said. This careful phrasing, and the fact the Met has not yet launched a formal investigation, mean it is unclear whether police believe any criminal offence has taken place in relation to the first allegation about photographs.
Any potential disciplinary procedure would necessarily come second to that, and could include scrutiny of the new claims.
There may yet be trouble ahead, meanwhile, for some of the people on social media who wrongly named innocent presenters. Campbell said he had alerted police, and Vine said he had passed at least one tweet to lawyers.
But as many, including the former Sun editor David Yelland, have argued, the Sun may also have questions to answer. The young person at the heart of the story said they had told the newspaper, before publication, that there was no truth in it, and they deny that anything “inappropriate or unlawful” took place, but the Sun’s report did not include any denial.
“If the claims of this young person’s lawyer are true, they indicate that the Sun failed to follow even the most basic journalistic standards in pursuit of this story,” the campaign group Hacked Off said in a statement.
