BBC Scandal - Huw Edwards formally suspended over payment of explicit images of teenager Read OP*

Purple Mountain

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844059#Comment_120844059

I'm a bit behind in the story. Is there still talks of money being exchanged for thr photos because surely that would change things then?

batman75

Huw Edwards wife naming him as the suspended TV presenter took the BBC off the hook. The police have decided based on what they currently know that he hasn't broken any laws. The three things this scenario shares with Phillip Schofield is the gay angle, both married and the age gap.

I feel sorry for Edwards on the depression front. It's a bitch of a thing to live with. I don't think he is using his mental health struggles to deflect from the controversial stories surrounding him in the last few weeks. However the optics of paying such a young person for pornographic pictures is not good. You could argue it makes a mockery of his marriage. Given his likely wealth his wife might have been happy to turn a blind eye but could still love him as a person and want to help him through his mental health struggles. Clearly Edwards had sexual needs his wife could never satisfy. On a personal level that has to have been hurtful to her and a stark realisation for his children.

I think he can come back from this. When he announced the Queen's passing he arguably had his most famous moment as a broadcaster. He is an excellent broadcaster and in the UK is regarded as the successor to David Dimbleby just to give a measure of his regard.

Quantum Erasure

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844339#Comment_120844339

...

Odhinn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844393#Comment_120844393

Not if the photos were of lads 18 and over, no.

Purple Mountain

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844434#Comment_120844434

I guess it's no different to Only Fans so.

Odhinn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844440#Comment_120844440

Yep. Thus far the cops have said there's been no offence commited. Unless something pops up he hasn't been indulging in criminality at all.

slay55

What does mental health and depression have to do with texting young men ?

El_Duderino 09

I know there has to be a legal cut-off point for things. But isn't the reaction to the lads age Interesting?

Lad is 17years 11 months: Edwards is a disgusting nonce. Needs to be fired, shamed and locked up.

Lad is 2 months older: ah, just a deal between adults. No harm, no foul.

The truth will be based on some more subtle facts. For instance was the young lad vulnerable? Which one made first contact and which one suggested cash for pictures. Was there any coercion or blackmail on either side?

But in any case, if nothing illegal happened then it's not really a public issue.

Str8outtaWuhan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844183#Comment_120844183

McGregor doesn't have a wife, he has a brood mare as we say in Roscommon 😁

Supercell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844537#Comment_120844537

Might not be a wife but with 5 kids together definitely a partner.

Maybe he is bi as the 5 kids might suggest. She may have already known that and if there was no actual cheating going on she may have decided its not worth leaving him for.

Sudden Valley

I can't see the guy ever coming back as a presenter and probably if he was on sky news he would be sacked already. The story reads that he was trying to satisfy his fetish without doing anything illegal but it still highly unprofessional.

I feel sorry for the kids and especially the wife. This is such a betrayal. I can't believe some posters are going after her now, that is pretty low, even for boards.

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844530#Comment_120844530

I found the distinction between age of consent and photographs interesting.

Have sex with a 17 year old and that's ok (legally). But if that 17 year old took a photo of the two of you in bed and sent it to you, that's illegal.

I'm not talking about the morality of it, that's separate. Just the fact that having sex is ok but photographs isn't seems wrong. I'd imagine that they would be legal at the same age.

BattleCorp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844434#Comment_120844434

That would take the illegality out of the mix but it wouldn't go down well with the public, a married man paying another person almost 40 years his junior for nudie pics or for webcam performances (if that's what happened).

cdeb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844648#Comment_120844648

Isn't that because of the Sun, ironically enough?

The discussion on the first page here that their page 3 girls were often as young as 16, so the law changed to stop that

Jack Daw

Why is the Caroline Flack/Mental health defence never brought up by people when other public figures are being relentlessly criticized by the media. , How come only certain people (like Huw Edwards) are allowed the benefit of this defence.

Why can't every single public figure including politicians not just use this defence to avoid criticism.

The media may be toxic but of course their is one way for public figures to avoid this toxicity , just simply don't read the newspapers, don't go on social media and don't watch the news.It's not that difficult for public figures to avoid the toxic media in order to spare themselves all this hardship and I advise them to do this rather than using the mental health card because they don't like negative stories about them in the media.

Oscar_Madison

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844914#Comment_120844914

I do find it interesting that a lot of media people have come out in defence of Hew. News bulletins were littered with such people yesterday.

So he has a few loyal friends right now but I wonder how many will still appear on news bulletins asking people to give him a break if the findings of the BBC investigation are quite negative towards him.

His alleged behaviour and his medical condition are two separate entities- I don’t hear these media people urging the public and the media to go easy on non- celebrities who have been caught up in similar situations. It’s simply the media “looking after their own”.

Brid Hegarty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120827010#Comment_120827010

Yeah, Ryan Adams being yet another example.

briany

@Jack Daw

Why is the Caroline Flack/Mental health defence never brought up by people when other public figures are being relentlessly criticized by the media.

Probably because the public loves to pillory people and they really don't care about the mental anguish of the target. The mental anguish of the target is, in fact, part of the game. The Caroline Flack hand wringing had nothing to do with feeling sorry for Caroline and everything to do with metaphorically washing the hands of blood so that the hunt may take place again and always. :)

taxAHcruel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844523#Comment_120844523

Apologies if you do not actually want an answer to this question given my answer will be long :) But I will treat it as a real question rather than a rhetorical one just in case anyone else is wondering the same thing too.

Everything. Or nothing. Is the quick answer.

It depends on the individual case. And I can not comment on the individual case given I know literally nothing about Huw Edwards. I looked at his pictures when he was named and I can not recall ever having seen him before. Which I guess shows how much I watch television or the BBC. Which is never. Our family do not even own a TV.

But I can speak in general terms. Poor mental health and depression _ can _ in some individuals lead to behaviors that are not congruent with their actual wants or desires or incentives in life. It can lead people who are not even homosexual or ephebophiles or pedophiles to engage in behaviors that very much make it look like they are. They can do all the same things such people do - without actually being one of them.

Which makes our ability to work with and treat people very difficult. Because you can not make any upfront assumptions about what a person is or is not - or what needs and desires drive their behaviors or not - before evaluating and treating them. Someone who presents with homosexual behaviors may or may not even be homosexual. And as with physical conditions a medical doctor might treat - understanding what the underlying issue actually is can massively influence what treatment will actually work.

If someone presents with all the clues suggesting they have a bacterial infection - all the antibiotics in the world may not help them if in fact it turns out they have a viral or fungal infection or some massive dietary deficiency. Similarly if someone presents with behaviors that are congruent with them being an ephebophile then all the treatments in the world are maybe not going to help if they in fact aren't. Is the behavior the problem - or the symptom?

So to your question which I can therefore only answer in a general way rather than specific to Edwards. What _ can _ mental health and depression have to do with a male patient texting or seeking out young or underage men or boys if we are going to assume they are not doing it because that is actually their primary or secondary sexual interest? I can answer your question if we phrase it that way and if we make that opening massive assumption.

Well quite a few things really is the answer. I could write a novel length post on potential links here. But I will just throw out a few random examples.

If for example his depression alienated him from peers men and boys - getting no validation or approval or connection with them or his own father - he could be seeking validation and connection with them later in life through sex and sexuality. And he may be selecting to contact the age group(s) at which he himself felt that alienation most painfully in his own history. Having boys/men of that age engage with him at all, even sexually, might therefore feed a historic need for validation that he lacked at that age himself and still suffers from after the fact. Being the daddy in a homosexual daddy/son scenario similarly can feed into a childhood lack of paternal validation or approval.

Or for example people who have a history of trauma can - contrary to what we might expect - often actually seek out behaviors or scenarios that put them _ back into _ that pain. Which of course seems mad to us. But if he has a depression and pain that is rooted in being treated awfully or hurt by peers when he himself was 19/20 he might seek to be demeaned or used sexually or similar by people of that age again. Reliving past traumas by seeking out scenarios or behaviors that evoke some or all of the feelings from those traumas.

Another random example is that depression can often come with very strong feelings of self hatred. Which if you are not actually a bad person can lead to feelings of severe and debilitating confusion and anxiety. They wonder why is their brain flooding them with these feelings of being an awful and terrible and evil and disgusting person that they can not make sense of? And it can lead such patients to seek out behaviors that validate those feelings. Which again might seem mad to us. But their being able to say to themselves "Oh look I actually am a bad person because I am doing and repeating this bad behavior" can actually be a kind of massive psychological relief to them as addictive as any drug. It does not alleviate their ongoing feelings of shame and self hatred. In fact quite the opposite - it can worsen them - but the emotional relief gained from at least being able to make sense in some messed up way of those feelings can have more of an effect than you might imagine.

Another example which is unfortunately all too common is that if some older or parental or similar figure engaged with the patient sexually at that age - they can seek out reversed sexual scenarios themselves. For example people who were sexually abused as children can later in life sexually abuse children.

And a final example is that a lot of behaviors can merely be "self harm". The lay public tend to have some passing notion about physical self harm. "Cutting" for example is something some people will have read about in passing but probably know very little about. This is where a patient is actively physically harming and hurting themselves. Which they are doing not because it brings them pleasure - but because in the moment it is alleviating something else going on with them. But "Self Harm" does not have to just be physical. It can manifest emotionally / mentally / spiritually too. There are many ways to engage in self harm other than to hurt the flesh.

As I said this is general answering of the spirit of your question under the assumption inside that question. I know nothing about Edwards and he may simply be a closet homosexual ephebophile who gets off on boys in their late teens. I don't know. And at this moment I would doubt anyone else on social media such as this knows either. His own wife and family probably do not even know. Hell he himself might not even know!!!

But if it fell to me to treat him as a patient - I would be making no initial assumptions either way and would be seeking to explore all the examples above and many many more.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120845152#Comment_120845152

You may very be right.

On balance, I think more often than not these situations play out in exactly the way we would expect them to.

slay55

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120845152#Comment_120845152

Thanks, appreciate the detailed explanation. It was a genuine question and not rhetoric.

some interesting examples that I had not envisaged.

taxAHcruel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120845193#Comment_120845193

Probably. I have no statistics in my head on that. I genuinely do not know how often it is that when a patient engages in X that it is because they are actually into X. I just know that it is very very very common that they are not into X at all. But the lay public outside the psychology and psychiatric professions simply - through no fault of their own at all - will assume it is so. But when a patient sits before us having engaged in X we can make no assumptions off the bat.

But contrary to instinct for example when someone is caught sexually abusing children or downloading child pornography - it is far from uncommon that it turns out they are in no way actually a pedophile themselves. And that is confusing to the average member of the public to the point some will get massively angry in response to hearing that rather than even begin to accept it.

But while our halls of justice can (and probably should, I am no legal scholar or philosopher of law) treat them equally either way - our professions of mental health treatment which I know much more about can not and should not.

I know nothing about Edwards. All I can do is hope he is treated fairly and correctly under the law and under mental health treatment based on what he has actually done (if anything) and what is actually wrong with him (if anything) - and he actually faces whatever Justice and Treatments that actually line up with his reality. Which is all we can ever hope for those who fall before our halls of Law and Health.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120845214#Comment_120845214

Which is in itself a good thing in some ways. Most people would not even consider such things because most of us thankfully never have to! The fact we do not have to understand or deal with or encounter such things is a sign of the great privilege most of us live under even if we do not know it is a privilege we have. The fact you asked the question you did is a sign of the great privilege you and I and others actually live under and should be thankful for.

The downside of this of course is that most people therefore are ignorant of what people with mental health issues are actually going through when we encounter them. We do not know because most of us never have to know.

Jequ0n

This witch hunt is nothing but despicable on so many different levels

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844648#Comment_120844648

Yeah it's interesting. I don't pretend to have thought about it or looked into any of this until the last few days. I don't have a strong opinion on it either. The law has to have clear boundaries and that's far enough.

Bit it's definitely interesting. I'm told the biggest category in porn in the "teen" genre. Should everyone who ever watched "teen" porn be rendered unemployable? Or is it just those people with public facing jobs or is it just people who are publicly outed?

I'll just wait and see other info becomes available before pretending I know what's going on, and draw any conclusions.

wpd

i am always amazed how the celebrities when they are caught try to swing the narrative to how they are the victim and the one to feel sorry for.

slay55

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120845275#Comment_120845275

I am glad that I asked the question.

I think my original thoughts and assumptions were very narrow sighted and found your posts highly informative.

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120845358#Comment_120845358

same. Until the discussion came up I was completely unaware of it. I might have heard the two separate figures in the past but never put them together.

Leg End Reject

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120844393#Comment_120844393

Yes, but both OF and Snapchat can be used to charge for photos and videos on demand, OF also has a subscription facility. That doesn't make it illegal.

Leg End Reject

I don't know why people are suggesting Huw Edwards is "just playing the mental health card". He has spoken about this before and it is well known he has depression. It's also likely that the pressure of this led to a depressive episode.

El_Duderino 09

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120845493#Comment_120845493

It's basic to see it like that. It's not black and white. Both things can be true.

It's not that he's either a nonce in full mental health or he's a victim of mental I'll health and did nothing wrong. The depression is a separate point from whether he did something wrong.

If he's in hospital (likely at risk of death) then why would the family not say so? Do they have to not say he's in hospital in case some people are so basic that they'll think he's just in hospital to 'swing the narrative?