[Russ]

Any sex crime involving children is despicable and no sentence will ever feel long enough for many people, especially victims of such crimes.

I openly (and wrongly) assumed there was more being made of this than it was, with most people being reactionary in their approach to the whole thing when it first came out that he'd been involved in something foolish.

It's absolutely right that simply viewing category A, B or C photos are not 'victimless' offences as if the images already existing equates to the crime already having been committed in he past, when they were taken.

In Law, mitigating circumstances can influence a person's behaviour, whether we like it or not.

In no way am I suggesting it excuses anything.

However, it's also well-known to judges and magistrates that all kinds of attempts are often made to garner sympathy for the defendant.

Were Edwards' mit-circs genuine? Yes, I mostly think they were.

But he could at any time have broken off contact with the Welsh guy who sent him stuff. He could have instantly deleted anything questionable that showed up on his phone. Granted he said (words to the effect of) "don't send anything underage", but why not "don't send anything that could be mistaken or misconstrued for underage".

For the purposes of context, for a moment let's remove the fact he had underage material on his phone. Let's just say he was receiving sexual images of clearly-adult women. He's doing nothing illegal then. Morally it could be argued he's cheating on his wife but that's a different story.

However, there was an underage, or at least implied aspect to his actions.

Given the fact he wasn't distributing them, specifically asking for them, or making/taking the photos/videos himself, for a first-time offender who may well have depression or similar mental health issues, his sentence is pretty much standard for what he did.