The youngster who sparked Huw Edwards’s fall from grace by revealing the shamed BBC star paid him for X-rated photos says he ‘should be in jail’.
When he was 17, the boy was being paid £2,000 at a time – amounting to the whopping sum of £35,000 – by the 63-year-old news anchor.
He previously didn’t see anything wrong with this, and told his mother and stepfather it was their favourite presenter who was giving him extravagant amounts of cash.
Now 21, he feels ‘groomed’ by the older man and blasted the judge who handled Edwards’s indecent images case for not imprisoning him.
The Welshman, who was previously the BBC’s glittering star presenter, smiled as he was spared jail at Westminster Magistrates’ Court having previously admitted three charges of ‘making’ indecent photographs.
He was sent 41 illegal images by convicted paedophile Alex Williams over WhatsApp but was handed six months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years.
His punishment has been criticised by lawyers and activists as being too lenient, with one child sex abuse campaigner branding the justice system ‘ludicrous, absurd and embarrassing’ as a result.
The young man told The Mirror it’s ‘disgusting that people like this get to roam the streets while others are in jail for petty theft, and more minor crimes’.
He said: ‘He’s free to walk around and do whatever he wants. He could easily do it again, who knows?
‘They said he couldn’t go to prison because of his mental health and I just thought, what a load of rubbish.’
Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard Edwards begged convicted paedophile Alex Williams to ‘go on’ when asked if he wanted ‘naughty pics and vids’ of somebody described as ‘yng (sic)’.
The court also heard Edwards paid Williams hundreds of pounds after he sent him pornographic images, but his defence barrister Philip Evans KC said the broadcaster did not make payments to Williams in order to receive indecent images of children.
The prosecution said Williams asked Edwards for a ‘Christmas gift after all the hot videos’. Prosecutor Ian Hope said: ‘Alex Williams says he wants some Air Force 1 trainers that cost around £100, and Mr Edwards offers to send him £200.’
Of the indecent images he received, the estimated age of most of the children was between 13 and 15, but one was aged between seven and nine.
The teenager who spoke out about how Edwards victimised him said he felt ‘sick’ learning about the full extent of the charges, and that Edwards was messaging Williams at the same time.
One payment from the BBC presenter was transferred with a message which said simply: ‘Be Loyal.’
The young man also told The Mirror that he and Edwards did actually meet up in person in Cardiff, and Edwards ‘didn’t care who saw him with me’.
The Met and South Wales Police said they found no evidence of criminal offences in relation to his relationship with Edwards.
His furious mother also said she wanted Edwards to be locked up and slammed the police for missing the chance to look through his phone.
The disappointed mother told The Sun: ‘I’m devastated Edwards hasn’t gone to prison for the things he did. He’s exploited young children for his own sick ends and should have been jailed.
‘People have been jailed for years for rioting — yet paedophiles sharing pictures of young children being sexually abused somehow doesn’t warrant the same punishment?’
She also slammed the police for being slow to act and missing the chance to examine Edwards’s phone and laptop.
She said: ‘It’s shocking that police didn’t recover the phone he was using to receive the child abuse images. It makes me think, how many more victims are there?’
Her son’s stepfather has written to his MP demanding to meet Tim Davie in person, too. He said: ‘The BBC should have put him on suspension without pay from day one. The police should have done something a lot quicker. They missed a chance to look at his phone and laptop then.’
The teen was allegedly asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement and said he felt ‘groomed’ by the disgraced presenter.
The young man, who actively defended Edwards at the time, later claimed he was in a ‘troubled state of mind’ when he first reached out to the ex News at Ten anchor.
It all came crashing down when the then teenager’s mother found the messages between the pair for a rendezvous at Cardiff train station.
Texts would seesaw drastically from love hearts and kisses, calling the teenager a ‘good boy’ and saying ‘hey beautiful,’ to aggressive swearing such as ‘You are an ungrateful f***. You f****g disaster’ and asking him: ‘You think my life revolves around you? Get f*****g real.’
Other messages included ‘you’ve disappointed me. I regret helping you so much’ and a chilling Instagram direct message telling the boy: ‘I’m with my family stop being a pain’.
The young man’s mother and stepfather were worried about their previously ‘happy’ boy when he would act so differently to his normal demeanour it was like he had a ‘twin’.
They told The Sun’s documentary ‘Huw Edwards: Unmasked’ that he would buy clothing and stay out all night partying when he had no money that they knew of.
But they became aware of bank transfers of up to £2,000 at a time and asked his cousin if he knew where the cash was coming from.
To his mother’s horror, he said it was an ‘old man with grey hair’. She told The Sun: ‘I couldn’t believe it. A grey haired man was sending money to my 17-year-old-son – I felt sick.’
When they asked the teenager directly, he confessed it was the BBC’s Number One golden boy Huw Edwards – a fellow Welshman.
His stepfather admitted to The Sun his disbelief that this national treasure could be responsible.
‘He said it was Huw and we didn’t believe him – I didn’t believe him. I knew he was getting the money from somewhere but I didn’t believe it was a BBC news reader.’
He described how the boy tried to prove it by phoning Edwards as he was live on air, and his parents could see his reaction to what seemed to be his phone ringing in his pocket.