My ‘pillar of the community’ husband downloaded the worst child abuse images – how I found out will haunt me forever

INSERTING a CD into a computer, Margaret Carless started to feel a sense of unease.

She had found a stack of silver discs next to her husband Terence Donovan’s computer but as she popped one into the drive to listen to his music, there was an error message. 

Margaret then saw the ‘pictures’ icon and hovered the cursor over it before clicking – it was then that her whole world started to unravel and she discovered the grotesque truth about her ‘pillar of the community’ husband. 

“I thought they were music CDs so put one in the computer, but it kept saying ‘error’,” says Margaret who is now 71.

“But when I pressed ‘pictures’, what I saw sickens me to this day. It was a woman who was being filmed without her knowledge. I knew it was wrong. It was horrific and I felt unwell. Just talking about it now repulses me.”

Donovan was a retired shop owner manager and a former trustee of a social club, but Margaret’s discovery – an image of a woman who had been secretly filmed – started an investigation which exposed him as a prolific paedophile. 

After seizing his computer, police found a sick collection of images. There were 2000 indecent images of children – 46 of the most serious nature. Others were extreme pornography involving animals. 

The images had been collected between 2002 and 2018 – most of Margaret’s marriage. 

After it transpired that she had been living with a paedophile Margaret’s mind whirred – were there signs, did she miss something? 

It is an experience the relatives and spouses of sex offenders often have – and most probably something the wife of former news presenter Huw Edwards will have shared in the months since he admitted making indecent images of children back in July.

Odd Behaviour

Margaret, from Cardiff, recalls that Donovan would stay up late most nights, and he would hide his computer screen when she came into the room. 

“Terry would slam the computer shut when I walked in,” she says. “Once I said ‘Did I catch the cat with the cream?’ and he looked shocked and raced to bed. 

“I thought it odd at the time but left it.”

“I felt like I was in a tunnel in that marriage,” she says. “You think you must be imagining things but if you’ve got a gut feeling, you’ve got to act on it.”

However, she is adamant that neither she – nor Vicky Flind, Huw’s wife, is to blame. 

“They often have wives, girlfriends, and partners,” she says. “I feel sorry for Huw Edwards’ wife Vicky. How was she to know she was married to a man like him? She must be kicking herself, thinking ‘what did I miss?, but the truth is she didn’t miss anything. She is not to blame and neither are his children.

“I saw him as someone with authority like Huw Edwards and I expect he was aware of that.

Margaret

“I learnt that in counselling sessions I had after Terry was convicted. I’m blameless. Like Huw, Terry was the paedophile.”

Margaret, thankfully, does not have children with Donovan, who she started a relationship with in 1999, two years after divorcing her first husband.

Abuse of Power

“He was a charmer,” recalls former shop worker Margaret. “He could charm the birds from the trees.  I was single and he was widowed. We worked together but didn’t speak a lot and then after I had left the job we bumped into each other in the street.

“He asked me out and I was flattered. He was a shop manager and the trustee of a local social club. He was a pillar of the community. While I was independent – I owned my own home – I was also quite naive.”

“I saw him as someone with authority like Huw Edwards and I expect he was aware of that.

“He would always wear a suit and tie and carry your bags for you. He was a real gentleman, cracking jokes and always helpful. He would often do the washing, ironing, cleaning and cooking. I fell for him.”

They married in the October of 1999 at Cardiff Registry Office and initially Margaret was happy, but the sparkle soon started to fade. 

Margaret claims that after a few years Donovan, who had retired in his early 50s, suggested they sell Margaret’s home and move from Cardiff to Tenby ‘for a fresh start’. 

About to become a grandmother Margaret wasn’t keen to leave her family, but reluctantly, she did move. While Donovan seemed charming on the outside, she claims that he had another side to him which made her feel like she had to go along with his plans. 

However, Margaret enrolled in a health and social care degree at Open University and regularly travelled back and forth to the city. After four years – still unhappy in living in the caravan in Tenby – Margaret moved back to Cardiff and worked as a care assessor.

Donovan stayed in Tenby and she would visit him every few weekends, while he lived with her in Cardiff during the winter months. However, Margaret remembers that he would want to know exactly when she would be back in Tenby and schedule her visits.

He was, she says, secretive too. “He never, ever allowed me to see his phone,” she says. “He even took it in the toilet with him. 

“He didn’t sleep in the nights. I thought he was watching TV in another room.”

And then there were the times he would slam his laptop shut. 

After she found the voyeuristic image of a woman in 2018 Margaret had to think fast. “My mind was racing,” she says.

Taking Action

“I chose not to look at the other CDs because I didn’t want to see more. But I used my cunning not to immediately confront him. Instead – and it took all the strength I had – I carried on as normal. But looking him in the eye was hideous. As soon as I left him the next day I got into bed and cried.”

Just a few weeks later she visited her local police station in Cardiff and told them what she had seen. “It took courage,” she says. “I knew I had to do it but it was frightening – he was my husband.” She was assured she’d done the correct thing. 

In April 2019 Donovan’s caravan was raided, his computer seized and she was subsequently called in for an interview. 

“Learning that he’d had more than 2000 files of little children on his computer including some which were Category A was shocking”, says Margaret.

“The man I married was a different person. He was a rotten paedophile and I felt sick.”

She has never spoken to him about his crimes, although she glimpsed him one day in Barry Island, South Wales, while he was on bail. “I was so gobsmacked and scared that I turned round and ran away,” she says, explaining that she chose not to attend his court case. 

At Swansea Crown Court in October 2022 Terence Donovan, then 73, pleaded guilty to voyeurism by recording a private act and possessing 46 indecent images of children in Category A – the most serious – as well as 52 in Category B, 1,205 in Category C, and 684 extreme pornographic images involving animals. 

He was jailed for 16 months, but Margaret believes he served half. 

We’re not sending a proper message to these paedophiles.

Margaret

“It’s a slap on the wrist,” she says. “You get more for shoplifting.”

She’s now thrown her support behind The Sun’s Keep Our Kids’ Safe campaign launched after Edwards got a six-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, at Westminster Magistrates’ Court for three charges of making indecent images of children last week – seven of the 41 images were category A – the most serious classification – two of which showed a child aged between seven and nine. 

“I think with anything like that the minimum should be five years,” says Margaret. “These are real children being abused in the most disgusting of ways. It’s absolutely horrendous.

“We’re not sending a proper message to these paedophiles. I appreciate the judge’s hands were tied but I think the justice system should be re-evaluated so that these people are getting years behind bars.”

Margaret says that counselling has helped her come to terms with what happened. 

“The first thing the counsellor told me is ‘It wasn’t your fault – you can’t blame yourself,’” she says. “It was a hard lesson to learn but she was right.

“There are still times when I struggle to banish the irrational thoughts of self-loathing but I’ve taken back my maiden name and started a course to become a counsellor so I can help others who have been through trauma.

“There has to be more stringent sentences for paedophiles. These are little children, it really is the sickest of crimes.”