Huw Edwards: A seedy online predator who should be in jail - Christa Ackroyd

The armchair philosophers among us even equate the shedding of the trees with the shedding of the old year as we move towards the new. My goodness, I do hope next year brings better news and improves my mood. Mellow it is not.

I am a positive person. I like to fill my columns with titbits and yes comment on news events of the week with an attitude that reflects my nature. I believe firmly there is more good in the world than bad.

But as I write from a long awaited break on the North York Moors the swirling mist is coming down, the rain clouds look here to stay for a while at least and I am doing something I never do, trying to avoid the news.

With no end to the war in Ukraine and an ever deepening crisis in the middle east I am trying not to read or listen to anything which mentions the words ‘World War Three.’ I am not ducking the issue but it is making me uneasy that’s for sure.

Even the return of Strictly Come Dancing couldn’t lift my mood. It still feels tainted after the bullying allegations and it would seem others agree with me, the opening week having seen its poorest viewing figures since the programme began.

At least Bake Off lightened my mood. If you feel depressed, eat cake. It’s a simple principle. But even cake won’t cut it at the moment.

I just feel frustrated. Frustrated with the politicians, frustrated with the weather, and frustrated with authority. The Huw Edward debacle has left the BBC even more damaged than they were post Saville.

I care not whether there were ‘difficult’ decisions to make once their golden boy was arrested late last year. That is what the top dogs are paid for.

He should have been sacked then and the £200,000 deposited in his bank account until he was allowed to resign would have been saved by an organisation making yet more cuts to hard working troops on the ground. So they’ve asked for it to be paid back. Good luck with that one.

And how much will that cost in legal fees? As for the documentary they produced, what a weak pathetic offering that was. Let’s tell it as it is. Forget that he was the so called ‘voice of the nation’.

The truth is Huw Edwards was a seedy online predator who sought and paid for photographs of abuse, child abuse. And he should have gone to prison.

As one campaigner in the area of child protection, Sammy Woodhouse from Rotherham, put it ‘if protestors can go to prison for shouty words’ then why can’t the same happen to vile paedophile predators and that includes a man who was receiving and asking for indecent images of vulnerable children.

It is double standards in the first degree.

The BBC took a far tougher and far braver stance with a story equally as sickening this last week in their documentary Al Fayed, Predator at Harrods.

But are you surprised that Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service didn’t listen to the women who came forward at the time? Surely not. It’s the same old pattern.

They summon up the courage to come forward and they are ignored, or at least a David and Goliath battle ensues which ends with the little person being bullied into submission.

These women whose lives have been destroyed at the hands of a monster were left with nowhere to turn. And the documentary about a handful of them was a difficult watch. That a hundred or so have now come forward shows you the power of television.

That is what it is there do, to shine a spotlight when the powers that be fail to act. To be a voice for those who go unheard. And there is a proud history of doing so. And not only in the world of documentaries.

Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home was a drama on homelessness that was first broadcast in 1966. It led to the creation of the charity Crisis and gave a platform to Shelter which was launched just a few days later. And it has never been forgotten.

Hillsborough was a Jimmy McGovern drama that went a long way to forcing the politicians to review what happened that day in 1989 and led to the overturning of the original inquest decision of accidental death on each of the 97 who lost their lives, when in fact they were unlawfully killed.

And then there was Mr Bates Versus The Post Office, ITV’s exceptional drama centred on one of the greatest miscarriages of justice this country has ever seen which saw hundreds of innocent postmasters face bankruptcy and prison.

Just a couple of weeks ago it was rightfully honoured at the BAFTAs as the most powerful drama of the past year.

And yet here is the reason for my mood. We can turn on our telly and be truly shocked. We can express our disappointment even our anger at events that should never have happened. But without authority ,by that I mean those at the top, doing their jobs we are powerless.

Homelessness is as big a problem as it was in the 1960s. The Hillsborough victims were exonerated after 30 years of legal proceedings yet no one has ever been held to account, despite the accepted facts that police officers altered their accounts of what happened that day and created a false case to blame those who died.

And now despite all the accolades of a programme on the telly we shockingly learn that the postmasters and mistresses are still waiting to be paid out, or most of them are.

And in the case of the government, pay your dues. And that includes those who received contaminated blood, or were even worse the unwitting victims of experimentation, yet still have not been recompensed.

The new owners of Harrods have been swift in their condemnation of a former owner who abused his power.

They have been quick to apologise and to offer financial settlements to his victims, which it would seem could be more than a hundred women.

A society without accountability is a broken society. Accountability which is all words and no action is equally as damaged. Almost a hundred people died at Hillsborough.

Victims who contracted mesothelioma through exposure to asbestos had to wait decades for a decent settlement and miners who later discovered their job gave them a dust or industry related disease after the cut off date 2004 had to fight for their cases to be heard too.

Postmasters have lived through hell, even died before the powers that be have even begun to right the wrongs they endured.

Many of those who died having contracted HIV through blood transfusions are remembered only by their families while those who have been sexually abused still fear to even bring their cases to the attention of those who are there to protect them in case they are not believed.

And Huw Edwards should be in jail.