But the decision to allow him to walk free from court prompted anger from MPs and child protection campaigners.
Susie Hargreaves, an online safety consultant and the former chief executive of the Internet Watch Foundation, which removes child abuse images from the internet, said: “I do think it is lenient under the circumstances and unfair to the children in the images.
“It is not a victimless crime and, as someone who has seen lots of category A images and seen the devastating impact on those children, which they carry their whole lives, I think you need to send out stronger messages on this.
“I would always sympathise with someone who has mental health issues, but think the sentencing sends a mixed message to offenders because it implies that if you have some mitigating personal circumstances that you are not going to get a severe sentence.”
Toby Young, the director of the Free Speech Union, said: “Last month, a man was jailed for re-posting three offensive images about Muslims on Facebook, even though he deleted them shortly afterwards and apologised.
“Yet Huw Edwards, who pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children, has been given a suspended sentence. It’s hard not to conclude we have a two-tier criminal justice system in which Islamophobia is punished more severely than paedophilia.”
Lee Dunn, 51, was jailed for eight weeks in August after pleading guilty to sending a grossly offensive message. During his police interview, he said that he was just following the herd, but when he saw the comments under what he had posted he knew it was a mistake and posted an apology, deleting the previous messages.