Janice Turner on why men who like to look at child abuse don’t go to prison:

Anyone shocked that Huw Edwards didn’t go to prison hasn’t been paying attention. The sentencing magistrate wasn’t dazzled by his BBC stardom or cutting him slack because of his liberal politics or long-repressed homosexuality. To put it bluntly, the newsreader’s offences were at the very bottom of the paedophile league table.

Edwards had 41 child abuse images on his phone, seven of which were category A, the very worst kind. Compare him with other recent cases: a TV comedian found with 35,000 images on multiple devices, a rabbi from Pinner with 1,694 (189 category A), or the Chesterfield scout leader with 6,440 images (756 As). They all, like Edwards, received suspended sentences.

In fact eight out of ten stay out of prison. That’s because there aren’t enough prisons.

There are 850 arrests a month for child abuse image offences and, according to the child safety institute Childlight, 1.8 million British men have admitted to viewing such material online.

It is almost entirely a guy thing, Turner says.

The problem is not just too big for the criminal justice system to absorb but too endemic for most of us to comprehend: your old boss, your friend’s husband (who seemed such a great guy), the man who announced the Queen’s death are secretly aroused by grotesque crimes.

Their excuses are legion. Edwards cited variously an overbearing father, attending Cardiff University not Oxbridge, a health condition that narrows his arteries and — since a woman must be culpable somehow — emotional estrangement from his wife.

So random. He might as well have said octopus, Plato, spinach, North Dakota. What in literal hell is the connection? You’re unhappy or stressed or overworked so the solution is…to look at images of children being tortured? Not drink or coconut cream pie or drugs or long walks in beautiful scenery but…staring at tortured children? HOW DOES THAT HELP?

How is that consoling or pleasurable or compensating or cheerfully distracting or a happy reward? How is it in any way a consolation for misery or exhaustion? I do not get it.

But read court reports and several excuses recur: mental health, depression, overuse of prescription meds, alcohol and, above all, “stress”. At which women shake our heads, since however bad our day, we don’t think it would be improved by watching naked, terrified little girls.

Or naked terrified little anythings. If these incomprehensible men are comforted by pictures of boys being tortured they probably also like seeing animals tortured. The rest of us, meanwhile, literally cannot bear such pictures, of boys or girls or animals or anyone sentient.

The reason men who’d claim to be loving fathers can pore over images of abused children is because they delude themselves they’re not “real”. Professor Fry says they commonly say “but I didn’t hurt the child myself” as if it is a victimless crime. “But many survivors say that knowing their images are being traded millions of times is as traumatic as the abuse itself.” Sometimes, a clip becomes such a dark-web viral hit that grateful paedophiles send money to its creators in jail or try to track down the children who appeared in it. (If they haven’t “disappeared”, as many do.)

Surely Huw Edwards, a man who appeared on primetime TV in millions of homes, must know better than anyone that a person on screen is human too — that they suffer, because they are as real as you.

Screen goes dark.