THE mum of a paedo cop buried her son’s phone with her dead cat in a twisted bid to cover his sick crimes.
Lewis Edwards, 25, previously of Cefn Glas, Bridgend, used Snapchat to groom more than 200 girls online and admitted 160 counts of child sexual abuse and blackmail involving 4,500 indecent images of children.
He and his mother, Rebekah, 48, were then charged with perverting the course of justice by concealing further evidence from the police, including burying the phone.
The mother and son were sentenced at Cardiff Crown Court on Tuesday.
Lewis Edwards was handed a two-year and eight-month sentence for further possession of indecent images and 12 months for perverting the course of justice.
He will serve both concurrently with his prior lifetime sentence for child sexual abuse.
His mother, a former social care worker for Bridgend Council, was given a two-year sentence, for which she must serve half in custody.
The judge, Tracey Lloyd-Clarke said Rebekah Edwards’ offence was “too serious for anything other than immediate custodial sentence”.
She added: “Bearing in mind that one of the purposes for sentencing for these types of offences is deterrence as well as punishment.”
Lewis Edwards, a former police officer with South Wales Police, posed as a teenage boy to target young girls between 10 and 16, grooming them into sharing indecent images of themselves.
He appeared in court remotely from HMP Parkhurst, wearing a grey jumper, he spent most of the sentencing staring down at his hands on the desk in front of him.
Edwards was initially arrested on February 8, 2023, at his parents’ home.
After this, his mother found three more of his phones and moved them from one address to another, concealing them from the police investigation.
She then – at his request – buried one of them in the back garden in the grave of a family pet.
On August 3 of that year, the police executed a warrant at the family’s home and Mrs Edwards initially only handed over two phones, not knowing the police were aware of the third.
Questioned about the phone in the garden, she admitted it was there, and Mark Edwards, her husband, dug it up and handed it to the police.
Roger Griffiths, appearing for the prosecution, said: “At that time Mrs Edwards looked at her husband, her husband returned the look, and she said ‘I buried the phone in the garden when I buried the cat’.
“Mr Edwards told the officers he would go and get the phone.
“When it was retrieved from the earth it was a black mobile telephone with a smashed screen.”
He added the full extent of Lewis Edwards’ offending could not be presented to the court because the buried phone was damaged beyond repair.
The concealed phones came to light after a family member overheard conversations about the hidden evidence and reported it.
The phone found in the garden was too badly damaged to be searched, however, further indecent images of children, as well as applications commonly used by offenders to evade detection were found on the other phones.
Edwards used Snapchat to contact his victims and would manipulate the young girls into sending explicit photos and videos.
Despite the victims’ pleas for him to stop and threatening to report him to the police, Edwards continued to take advantage.
When they refused, he would become increasingly threatening, blackmailing them into complying out of fear he would expose them.
Many of the victims would beg the paedophile to delete the images, with heartbreaking audio and video footage played in court of the victims’ pleas for empathy. In one video, a girl of 13 is exposing herself while crying and wiping her face and types “Pls Stop… ‘I’m litro 13 pls jus del everything (sic),” reports WalesOnline.
Another victim, who was just 12 years old, said: “Just delete them please, I am sick of them now”, “Just delete them and I’ll do more”, “Leave me the f*** alone dude, I am serious.”
Edwards responded: “Hehe if u leave il ruin ur life rn… Now do the vids I asked for and stand further back yh x(sic)”.
The victim sent images of herself performing a sex act while visibly in distress and crying, and Edwards told her to not cover her face.
He was a serving police officer when he engaged in his predatory behaviour, having met one of his victims in the course of his work.
He was previously sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 12 years.
Lucy Dowdall from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “In assisting his attempts to conceal further evidence of his sexual exploitation of children, (Rebekah Edwards) demonstrated a lack of concern for the devastating impact of her son’s actions on innumerable young people and their families.
“Her sole concern was for her paedophile son and not for his victims or helping them secure the justice they deserved.
“The fact that Lewis Edwards involved his own family members shows how far he was prepared to go to cover up his offending, and his continued lack of remorse for his abhorrent behaviour.
“The images found on one of the phones retrieved included category A images, the most severe type of child abuse, indicating the seriousness of his offending.
“Our work on this case did not stop with the original conviction, and we have continued to work with investigators to identify where offences were committed, to ensure justice is served.”
Derek Ray-Hill, Interim CEO of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), the UK’s front line against online child sexual abuse imagery, said: “Every image or video of child sexual abuse is a crime scene.
“The children are real, and the abuse inflicted on them can affect them for life.
“Brazen criminals like Edwards think only of themselves.
“His selfishness in trying to cover his own tracks with schemes involving his own family is in stark contrast to how little he cares about those children who suffered as a result of his actions.”
