The family of the young man at the centre of the Huw Edwardsscandal was ‘ripped apart’, they’ve said.
Edwards, 62, was identified by his wife last year to be the BBC presenter accused of paying a young person more than £35,000 for sexually explicit images.
The Met Police confirmed there was no evidence of a crime being committed, while Edwards was suspended at the BBC and has remained out of the spotlight since.
The broadcaster has now issued an apology to the family of the young person at the centre of the scandal, who have hit out at the nine-month delay.
The corporation said it needs to ‘join [existing processes and systems] up better to ensure no matter how a non-editorial complaint comes into the BBC it is escalated swiftly, when needed, and dealt with by the right people.’
BBC Group chief operating officer Leigh Tavaziva continued: ‘The report identifies specific process shortcomings in the presenter case. The initial complaint in this case was not escalated quickly enough to senior management and we have apologised to the complainant for this.’
However, the anonymous young man’s mother has spoken out about the ‘immense pain’ the family has suffered.
She told The Sun: ‘We’ve suffered immense pain and it has taken nearly a year which has left me broken.
‘If the BBC had handled the complaint properly, we would have not had to go through this hell. We have been ripped apart as a family.’
Talking about the BBC review, she went on: ‘It’s a relief this independent report backs up what we’ve said all along — the BBC simply failed to take this seriously. If anything, this underlines how vital it is we get answers, for everyone’s sake.
‘It’s there in black and white — the BBC didn’t even log the complaint or follow it up. This is a devastating admission. We can only hope this should speed up the process towards the proper conclusions we need.
‘We just want to move on knowing what we told the BBC has been properly investigated, whatever that takes.’
It had originally been said the family complained about Edwards to the BBC in May 2023, and the BBC said it tried to contact them twice before the allegations broke.
However, BBC senior leadership was only informed of the issue on July 6, the review said.
After the story emerged last year, BBC director-general Tim Davie ordered a review to ‘assess how some complaints are red-flagged up the organisation’ and a ‘factfinding investigation’.
The review, led by Ms Tavaziva and carried out by Deloitte, highlights failures in the complaints process, saying that the initial complaint about Edwards was not logged on the relevant case management system so could not be seen by senior figures.
There was also no documented process for contact and follow-ups with the complainant, so when attempts to make contact were unsuccessful, the course of action was not clear.
It states: ‘The case was not logged on the incumbent case management system (Perspective) contemporaneously, meaning that there was no opportunity for wider visibility of the case within the BBC; and there was no documented process for contact with the complainant and/or follow-up, such that when initial attempts to contact the complainant were unsuccessful, the steps to be taken were not sufficiently clear and the process followed was not documented.’
The report also said that some employees interviewed said they would feel nervous about raising a complaint with the BBC, particularly if it was about a more senior member of staff or a high profile figure.
The report added there is a need for ‘greater consistency across teams in how non-editorial complaints are dealt with, regardless of the route by which they are received and then reviewed.’
It suggested ‘better use of technology to manage non-editorial complaints and work to ensure there is a complete picture of all cases across teams dealing with them; as well as work to ensure sufficient resources across specialist teams dealing with non-editorial complaints, to manage the workload in a timely manner without impacting on staff welfare.
In a letter to BBC News, the young person at the centre of the Edwards controversy said via lawyers nothing inappropriate or unlawful happened with the-then unnamed presenter.
Edwards has been absent from screens since the story first broke and his wife previously said he was receiving in-patient hospital care and was suffering ‘serious mental health issues’.