In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mirror, the then-teenager who was paid £35,000 by Huw Edwards finally reveals the truth of their relationship – and what really happened

The young man whose relationship with Huw Edwards set in motion the BBC star’s downfall has spoken publicly for the first time about the scandal.

The man, now aged 21 but who was a teenager and highly vulnerable when Edwards first asked him for explicit photos and messages, has told the Mirror he feels the newsreader took advantage of him.

He added: “I want to tell the truth about what happened… I’ve stayed silent for so long to protect Huw, but I feel sick at what has happened.”

The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, says he feels like Edwards, 62, “groomed” him. 

The scandal erupted last summer when it emerged the man’s mum and stepdad had claimed that Edwards paid £35,000 in return for “sordid” pictures of him. 

At first, Edwards was not named publicly, but within days his identity was revealed by his wife and he was admitted to hospital due to serious mental health concerns.

The man defended Edwards at the time. But after that he began to feel he was in fact a victim. Those feelings crystallised when he received a call this week from police telling him about the charges against Edwards over indecent images of children. The man says it is now time to tell his story. He says he was in a very troubled state of mind when he first contacted the television newsreader. Having fallen out with his mother and step-father, he was sleeping on friends’ sofas and had spent a few nights at a homeless shelter, which he described as “scary”. He began sending messages to famous people asking for help. He was in a burger bar in Cardiff when he happened to see Edwards on the TV, so decided to message him on social media.

Edwards was the only person to reply to any of the messages. The man said he didn’t ask for money, but Edwards deposited £500 into his PayPal account, which went towards hotel costs for a few days. The man told the Mirror: “Although it was a friendship at the beginning, it did change. He would say things like, ‘Are you going to do something for me then?’ I needed help, so I did. I feel like he sort of fed on my vulnerability… as he knew I needed the money. I felt like I was being groomed.”

The young man admits sending X-rated messages and videos. He says: “Because of who he was as a BBC presenter and because he had such power… I felt like i trusted him and that he cared. But that’s how the manipulation started. I looked up to this man but he didn’t really care about me. I felt like he was taking advantage of me but I felt I had to listen to him because he was Huw Edwards.”

Edwards spent up to £35,000 in return for photos, with the young person’s PayPal account showing dozens of transactions over two years. One message accompanying a £500 PayPal deposit stated: “Be Loyal.” The man said: “In my head I wasn’t selling pictures of myself I was just getting the money he said he would give me to help me. It turned out it was not just to help me, it was for the longer game, it was sexual, but it was never asked for directly. I think he was very clever in the way he went around it.”

The arrangement was blown wide open when his mum found messages after going through his phone. The young man says Edwards regularly pestered him about them meeting up. He said: “I turned him down loads of times.”

He added that the one time they did organise to meet up, his mum got wind of the rendezvous at Cardiff train station. The man said: “My mum got on my phone and was messaging Huw with him thinking it was me. My step-dad then turned up and recorded Huw at the station.” His mum went to the BBC who didn’t act on her complaint – and later went to the Sun newspaper saying how her son was being taken advantage of.

The man says: “I remember [Edwards] ringing me and demanding, ‘What the hell is going on?’ I said to him that I was 100% by his side, especially after everything that he’d done for me. I rang mum shouting at her, ‘What have you done?’”

He says he now regrets that his first instinct was to protect the broadcaster. Edwards was suspended by the BBC the day after the Sun article and was named publicly a few days later after mass speculation about his identity.

As the months passed after the scandal erupted, the man believed he would not hear from Edwards again. But he received a text from an unknown number in October, and it turned out to be Edwards. The man said: “I think it was about two weeks before he got arrested. The message said ‘guess who’ or something like that.

“The message said ‘don’t say my name on here… just call me’. So I phoned him and he said download the messaging app Signal. And he said we can catch up on there.” The man said he was staggered by Edwards’ demeanour on the call, adding: “He said, ‘What’s been going on? I really care about you’. He had no remorse for anything at all.”

It was the final time they spoke. A month later Edwards was arrested. This week Edwards pleaded guilty to three charges of making indecent images of children in a case unconnected to the young man’s experience. He says the police – who had previously found no evidence of criminal behaviour between him and the newsreader – had given him a heads-up this week about Edwards’ charges.

He said: “I had got home from work on Monday, and I didn’t have any idea why the police were calling. It was two hours before the news came out. I couldn’t get my words out, and felt instantly really uneasy. But it was almost as if everything just slotted into place and I realised the extent of it all.

“Last year I was still protecting him..and I didn’t really understand his true nature. But then hearing this news, all those nagging doubts were confirmed. It made my stomach drop.” He added: “I felt genuinely sick to my stomach I thought, is this real? When I heard the actual details of things, it just got worse and worse and worse.”

Edwards had been receiving the sick images – including a video of a boy as young as seven – at the same time as he was in touch with the young man. The man said: “I was in utter shock. I could not believe that this is what he’s been doing while I knew him. I can’t even believe I’ve put myself in that situation. I feel disgusted with myself in a way. Like I’ve had communications with this person.”

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Source: Tampa Bay Times