BBC paying for therapy of woman who complained about Huw Edwards

The BBC is paying for the therapy of a woman who made two complaints about disgraced newsreader Huw Edwards.

The Sunday Times was the first to report that a member of the public made complaints in May 2021 and again in January 2022, prior to the scandal in July 2023 in which Edwards was named as the presenter who had sent payments to a young person for sexually explicit images.

It comes days after Edwards pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children, shortly after the Metropolitan Police revealed he had been arrested in November 2023 and charged in June this year, following an investigation separate to last year’s scandal.

The complainant, a woman called Rachel who was in her 40s at the time, had never met Edwards but became friends with him after messaging him on Instagram in 2018.

She retracted her complaints about the former newsreader but the BBC nevertheless warned Edwards about his online conduct and told him to cease contact.

The first time she contacted the corporation, Edwards’s managers told him that a complaint had been made and the BBC later acknowledged that Rachel “would have been identifiable” to the former presenter, even though she was not named.

Their friendship is said to have continued until Edwards was taken off the air last year, even though a senior BBC manager met Edwards on February 23 2022, warning him to cease contact.

Following an investigation into its handling of Rachel’s complaint, the BBC admitted the meeting in which Edwards was warned “could have been conducted more formally”.

Rachel first contacted the BBC three years ago to stop the relationship as she alleges it was becoming “toxic”, as he refused to meet her and would become angry.

She also said she was struggling mentally and was not strong enough to end the relationship herself but had twice asked him to cease contact, including by blocking her, but he declined and they both continued messaging.

Before she learnt of his arrest, Rachel messaged Edwards and was warned to cease contact by his lawyers.

The Sunday Times said his lawyers previously told the publication he was unable to comment on these “unsubstantiated” allegations.

It reports that the BBC agreed, earlier this year, to pay for Rachel to receive therapy over the slow handling of her complaint, and last week indicated it would fund 12 further sessions.

Earlier in August, the unnamed young man whose contact with Edwards was first exposed by The Sun newspaper in July 2023, told the Mirror newspaper that he felt “groomed” by the broadcaster and “sick” after learning he was charged with child sex crimes.

The family of the unnamed young person originally complained to the BBC about Edwards in May 2023, and the former presenter was publicly named by his wife as the TV presenter at the centre of the allegations in July that year.

Following his guilty plea, two whistleblowers, one current and one former BBC worker, expressed disappointment that an internal inquiry into Edwards had not been made public after they alleged they received “inappropriate messages” from him.

Before Edwards resigned, he was the broadcaster’s highest-paid newsreader, with a pay bracket between £475,000 and £479,999 for the year 2023-24, according to the BBC’s latest annual report.

The BBC has declined to comment.