paid money in exchange for abusive images of children, a court has heard. The disgraced News At Ten anchor has pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of a child after being sent 41 illegal pictures by convicted paedo Alex Williams over WhatsApp. Now, Westminster Magistrates Court has heard that the 63-year-old sent money for the criminal pictures and offered him a " gift".
Opening the case at court on Monday (September 16), prosecutor Ian Hope said: "It is clear from the face of the WhatsApp chat recovered that a deal of the chat between Alex Williams and Mr Edwards was sexual in nature. It is also clear that Mr Edwards was paying not insignificant sums of money low hundreds of pounds on an occasional basis to Alex Williams which Mr Williams directly asked for on several occasions, as gifts or presents, apparently off the back of sending abusive images to Mr Edwards, about which images they chatted." "Alex Williams has stated that the money was more generally to support him at university and amounted to around £1,000 to £1,500.
The bulk of the images were sexual images featuring younger-looking adult males, and therefore lawful. However, a significant minority proportion of the images recovered were IIOC. From the WhatsApp Chat recovered a total of around 377 sexual images were sent to Mr Edwards, of which 41 comprised IIOC (just over 10%).
" The court heard how Alex Williams asked for a "Christmas gift after all the hot videos". Prosecutor Ian Hope said th.