After five days of speculation, Huw Edwards has today been named as the BBC star at the centre of allegations about his private life. His wife, the TV producer, Vicky Flind, has released a statement in which she says her husband is ‘suffering from serious mental health issues’ and is now ‘receiving in-patient hospital care where he will stay for the foreseeable future’. Last year, her husband spoke about how he had been bedridden with depression. His wife says his condition has significantly deteriorated.
She says:
In light of the recent reporting regarding the ‘BBC Presenter’ I am making this statement on behalf of my husband Huw Edwards, after what have been five extremely difficult days for our family.
I am doing this primarily out of concern for his mental well-being and to protect our children. Huw is suffering from serious mental health issues. As is well documented, he has been treated for severe depression in recent years.
The events of the last few days have greatly worsened matters, he has suffered another serious episode and is now receiving in-patient hospital care where he’ll stay for the foreseeable future. Once well enough to do so, he intends to respond to the stories that have been published.
To be clear Huw was first told that there were allegations being made against him last Thursday. In the circumstances and given Huw’s condition I would like to ask that the privacy of my family and everyone else caught up in these upsetting events is respected. I know that Huw is deeply sorry that so many colleagues have been impacted by the recent media speculation. We hope this statement will bring that to an end.
In a separate development, the Met Police has said there is ‘no information to indicate that a criminal offence has been committed’. South Wales Police said there is ‘no evidence’ as well, and that they first received information about ‘the welfare of an adult’ in April this year. The force said there is no ongoing enquiry into Edwards.
The BBC says it will now move forward with their own investigation into the allegations about their star presenter, who has fronted BBC News for the past two decades. The Sun has said that, from the offset, the focus of its story was the way the BBC handled the complaints from the parents of the person at the centre of the allegations.
The reaction, so far, has been that of sympathy for Edwards. Nadhim Zahawi, a former chancellor, has wished him a ‘speedy recovery’ and for his family to be granted ‘the privacy they are entitled to’. Jon Sopel, a former BBC presenter now on The News Agents podcast, has said ‘there was no criminality’ but ‘perhaps a complicated private life. That doesn’t feel very private now. I hope that gives some cause to reflect. They really need to.’ The BBC’s world affairs editor John Simpson said he feels ‘so sorry for everyone involved in this: for the Edwards family, for the complainants, and for Huw himself’.
Sopel then joined Andrew Marr on LBC saying he has now been left thinking ‘what has this been about?’ and adding that the reporting has ‘exacted a terrible toll’ on Edwards. He told LBC’s Andrew Marr that some of their former colleagues on BBC News should now‘”look at themselves’ for having given such ample coverage to the story. The Sun has argued that exposing the mishandling of complaints was very much in the public interest: in the next few days, we can expect a debate about the ethics of the reporting.
