Tom Bryant & Adam Aspinall & John Scheerhout
·4-min read
The young man whose relationship with Huw Edwards set in motion the BBC star's downfall has told how his mum caught him trying to meet up with the BBC star. The man, now 21, says his mum took control of his phone and was messaging Edwards pretending to be her son.
He told the Mirror that the one time they did organise to meet up, his mum found out about 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."
The revelation was made during an interview with the young person at the centre of the scandal that 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. The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, says he feels like Edwards, 62, 'groomed' him.
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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." 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.
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."
As the months passed after the scandal erupted, the man said he 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 alerted him 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."
