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Former BBC news anchor Huw Edwards, once one of the most prominent media figures in Britain, was given a suspended prison sentence Monday for images of child sexual abuse on his phone.
Edwards, 63, pleaded guilty in Westminster Magistrates’ Court in July to three counts of making indecent images of children, a charge related to photos sent to him on the WhatsApp messaging service by a man convicted of distributing images of child sex abuse.
Edwards’ fall from grace over the past year has caused turmoil for the BBC after it was revealed the publicly funded broadcaster paid him about 200,000 pounds ($263,000) for five months of his salary after he had been arrested in November while on leave. The BBC has asked him to pay it back.
The sentence was a custodial jail sentence. There were just two mitigating factors that downgraded it to a suspended one by a whisker: 1. early guilty plea (in the UK this reduces sentence by a third) and 2. first offense. Typically a first offense under two years would be suspended for anyone.