EA prominent BBC presenter is said to have paid a teenager for pornographic photos to fund his drug addiction. The presenter is said to have started sending money for the explicit photos totaling £35,000 to a minor aged 17 three years ago, The Sun tabloid first reported on Friday.
A statement released on Sunday said “a male employee” had been “suspended”. The broadcaster is working “as soon as possible to establish the facts in order to determine the next steps,” the BBC statement said.
BBC wants to investigate “quickly and sensitively”.
The child’s mother who claims the BBC star paid her child for sexual pictures, tells The Sun how stunned she was when she saw a phone picture of the presenter in his boxer shorts. “I loved seeing him on TV.” She recognized him immediately. “He leaned forward and prepared for my child to perform for him,” adds the mother.
After the “deeply worrying allegations” became known, Culture Minister Lucy Frazer had previously urged BBC Director General Tim Davie to take further steps in a conversation. Given the nature of the allegations, it is important that the BBC is now given “the leeway it needs to establish the facts and take appropriate action,” Frazer wrote on Twitter. Davie assured her “that the BBC is investigating quickly and sensitively”.
According to the “Sun”, the family had already complained to the BBC in May – but the moderator remained on the air for several weeks. The broadcaster initially stated that it took all allegations made in the report “very seriously” and had set up appropriate “mechanisms to deal with them proactively”. In its current statement, the BBC now confirmed that it “first learned of a complaint in May”.
In an internal email to staff, quoted on the BBC website, Davie said he “strongly condemns the baseless rumors being circulated around the internet about some of our presenters”.
Former Home Secretary and MP for the ruling Conservative Party, Priti Patel, called for “a full and transparent investigation” into the case. Opposition Labor MP Rachel Reeves told Sky News on Sunday that “the BBC, but also the other broadcasters, have to pull themselves together because you seem to be lurching from one scandal to the next”.
British presenter Phillip Schofield resigned from broadcaster ITV in May after admitting an “unwise but not illegal” relationship with a young colleague. In April, the then-BBC chairman was forced to resign over a secret loan to ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
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