Pete Townsend arrested

[MacGuffin]

Townshend Arrested For Alleged Child Porn Possession

Police in London say legendary rock guitarist Pete Townshend of The Who is under arrest on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children.

Police searched the London home of Townshend Monday after the rocker admitted over the weekend that he's been downloading child pornography images as research for an upcoming autobiography.

According to British Broadcasting Corp. online, four officers arrived at Townshend's London home Monday to question the musician, while others followed with a search warrant, carrying evidence bags.

Townshend's attorney John Cohen said the meeting with police was by mutual agreement. News of Townshend's actions broke Saturday when a London paper reported that an unidentified rock star was being investigated by authorities for downloading child pornography.

The BBC reported that guitarist admitted he gave his credit card details to see a child porn Web site, but insisted he had done so for research and was not a pedophile. Townshend, 57, said the research was for his autobiography, which contains passages where he deals with his suspicions that he was a victim of childhood sexual abuse.

According to The Associated Press, British police have arrested 1,300 suspects, including a judge, magistrates, dentists, hospital consultants and a deputy school headmaster as part of Operation Ore, which is cracking down on people who view child pornography on the Internet.

In addition, 50 police officers also have been arrested, eight of which have been charged with offenses, reported AP.

Coming to the defense of her friend Townshend, model Jerry Hall said in a statement Sunday that the musician was an "avid supporter" of child welfare charities, reported the BBC. She noted that she had previously spoken with Townshend at length about the dangers of child pornography on the Internet.

Townshend, singer Roger Daltrey and bassist Roger Entwistle formed the Who in the late 1960s, and were later joined by drummer Keith Moon.

[Duck Sauce]

What is it with child pornography and celebrities latley? This is sickening.

[Jeremy Blackman]

the rocker admitted over the weekend that he's been downloading child pornography images as research for an upcoming autobiography.

Umm.. can someone please explain that to me?

Well, he'll have plenty more to write about.

[RegularKarate]

What is it with child pornography and celebrities latley? This is sickening.

I know what you mean, but it's the internet.  It's so much easier to catch people with child pornography now with the internet.

With PeeWee, it was all bullshit, but Ed Rooney, that guy I pinned years ago.

[bonanzataz]

Shit, Pee Wee AND Rooney. Can somebody find a common connection?



That's right. They both worked in TIM BURTON MOVIES! Burton's running an underground world of sex, drugs, despair, longing, and everything in between.

[GodDamnImDaMan]

Shit, Pee Wee AND Rooney. Can somebody find a common connection?

:lol!:

Pee Wee and Rooney! hahaha omg! that was funny!

[RegularKarate]

My wife seems to think that all these celebrities of the past being arrested for kiddie porn is just a way for aliens hiding on earth to communicate with eachother.

I seem to think that it's the more obvious internet.

It's so much easier to get a hold of this material on the internet now days.  I think a lot of that is because a good deal is being put out by the government in order to track downloads.

Also, if you're interested: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/doc_o_day/doc_o_day.shtml

[MacGuffin]

Who guitarist Pete Townshend posted an open letter on his website in defense of alleged pedophiles - claiming they were victims of a government "witch hunt". In the letter, which first appeared last October but has since been deleted, Townshend claims innocent people are being arrested in connection with child abuse allegations - because of "over-zealous" police. The "My Generation" rocker was arrested yesterday after admitting he logged onto child pornography sites, but claims he did so for research purposes. Townshend also writes in the letter of "a man who briefly worked for me who was arrested in the UK for downloading child pornography." This is thought to be a reference to shamed glam rocker Gary Glitter, who was jailed in 1999 for possessing child pornography. He worked with The Who on their rock opera Quadrophenia. Townshend continues, "I was cautious of openly condemning him until he had been tried. When he went to trial the buzzword that the newspapers kept reprinting - the word he had allegedly used in his regular internet searches - was 'Lolita.'" Townshend then states he discovered the term was one of the highest words used on web searches in Britain. "It seemed to me that there was some hypocrisy going on. Who were all these people typing 'Lolita' into their browsers? They were surely not all pedophiles. Perhaps they were simply curious of what they might find." He has been released on bail without any charge.

[budgie]

Watching Velvet Goldmine the other day, I noticed the scene where Brian is about to fuck a schoolboy is accompanied by a Gary Glitter track.  Strange.

I think RK is right in that there is just a greater availability of information. As for witch-hunts, I read an interesting book recently that suggested that when a taboo is about to be breached, society gets hysterical about trying to prevent that breach, so it could be that we're about to see a lowering of the age of consent after a period of extreme reactions to increased sexual awareness amongst children.

[MacGuffin]

Townshend Cleared of Possessing Kid Porn

LONDON - Rock guitarist Pete Townshend, co-founder of The Who, was cleared Wednesday of possessing pornographic images of children but still was placed on a national register of sex offenders.

That registration was part of a formal police caution Townshend received for accessing a Web site containing images of child abuse.

Townshend, 57, was arrested in January on suspicion of making and possessing indecent images of children. The arrest was part of Operation Ore, an FBI-led crackdown on Internet child pornography.

After a four-month investigation, London's Metropolitan Police said Wednesday the rocker "was not in possession of any downloaded child abuse images" but had accessed a site containing such images in 1999.

The musician acknowledged using his credit card to enter a Web site advertising child pornography but said he was doing research for his autobiography. Townshend denied being a pedophile and said he had campaigned against child pornography.

The title character in Townshend's rock opera "Tommy" - a deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard - is sexually abused by an uncle, and Townshend said he believed he was sexually abused as a young boy while in the care of his mentally ill grandmother.

On Wednesday, Townshend said he was wrong to access the Web site, but said police accepted he had no "nefarious purpose" in doing so.

"As I made clear at the outset, I accessed the site because of my concerns at the shocking material readily available on the Internet to children as well as adults, and as part of my research toward the campaign I had been putting together since 1995 to counter damage done by all kinds of pornography on the Internet, but especially any involving child abuse," he said in a statement.

Police, however, said it was not a defense "to access these images for research or out of curiosity."

As part of the cautioning procedure, Townshend's fingerprints, photograph and a DNA sample will be taken by police and he will be placed on a national sex offender registry for five years.