Ex-BBC producer found guilty of possessing indecent images of children

A former BBC producer has been found guilty of downloading child abuse images.

Dylan Dawes, 50, who started working for the BBC in 2000, had more than 6,000 indecent images of children on his devices when they were seized by police.

Dawes denied having a sexual interest in children and claimed someone else may have used the devices, which were sometimes left overnight at the BBC’s Cardiff HQ.

After a trial this week, he was found guilty by a jury at Cardiff Crown Court on Friday.

The court heard Dawes was arrested in 2022 after officers searched his Cardiff home, finding indecent images on four devices, including a hard drive, laptop and iPad.

Dawes, who worked with presenters including Jason Mohammad and Rhod Gilbert, told the court he had “fairly regularly” viewed “adult pornography” but denied having downloaded incident images of children.

Harry Baker, prosecuting, said the images had been found on four of Dawes’ devices and it was unlikely this was an “unhappy coincidence”.

Judge Egan, addressing the jury, said: “The prosecution effectively said to you, ‘what are the chances of that?”

Dawes joined the BBC while living in London in 2000 and started his job at BBC Wales after moving to Cardiff in 2001, where he worked as a producer on radio shows and podcasts.

Andrew Taylor, defending, said Dawes was of “good character” and described him as an intelligent man who would have known to dispose of any evidence, rather than move images into the easily-accessible recycle bin on his devices.

“He didn’t get rid of it because he had no reason to believe that there was any imagery on his devices that was incriminatory,” he said.

The court heard Dawes had “no idea” how the images were downloaded and denied having used the search term “jailbait”, suggesting someone else may have accessed the devices.

Dawes, of Cardiff, was suspended from his job at the BBC after his arrest and is no longer employed by the broadcaster.

On Friday he was found guilty of three counts of possessing an indecent image of a child, and three counts of making an indecent image of a child, relating to more than 6,000 images found on his devices.

He will be sentenced on May 14.