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Pete Townshend Denies Pedophilia, Says Buying Child Porn Was Research For Autobiography
01/13/2003 4:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Bruce Simon
(1/13/03, 4 p.m. ET) -- In response to an expected expose by British newspapers, Pete Townshend has admitted buying child pornography over the Internet, but vehemently denies he is a pedophile. The Who leader, who is married and has children, says he used his credit card to enter a child porn website, but claims that his reasons are above-board--he was doing research for his upcoming autobiography, in which he claims he was sexually abused as a young child.
Last week, Britain's Daily Mail and Sun newspapers published a report that an unnamed internationally famous musician was involved in a police investigation of child pornography. While Townshend's name was not mentioned publicly, word got out about who was being implicated and reporters converged on Townshend's home in London. Townshend then talked to the press and issued statements, explaining his activity.
Townshend said he had written about Internet pornography for some time on his website (petetownshend.com), and told a reporter for Britain's Press Association, "I think pedophilia is appalling. To fight against pedophilia, you have to know what's out there. I have been involved in a campaign against pedophilia on the Internet but it fizzled out...I have done a lot of work on pedophilia and my Web site has highlighted it. I have looked into the abuse that children have suffered in Chechnya and Kosovo and the portrayal of these children on the Internet and it appalls me."
He added, "I've been in touch with Scotland Yard to tell them what I was doing. I have contacted them but no police officers have contacted me. I am waiting for the police to talk to me but they haven't been round. I was worried this might happen and I think this could be the most damaging thing to my career."
Townshend later issued this statement: "I am not a pedophile. I have never entered chat rooms on the Internet to converse with children. I have, to the contrary, been shocked, angry and vocal (especially on my website) about the explosion of advertised pedophilic images on the Internet.
"I have been writing my childhood autobiography for the past seven years. I believe I was sexually abused between the age of five and six-and-a-half when in the care of my maternal grandmother who was mentally ill at the time. I cannot remember clearly what happened, but my creative work tends to throw up nasty shadows--particularly in Tommy."
In the song "Fiddle About," which Townshend wrote for the Who's 1969 rock opera Tommy, the main character's Uncle Ernie sings, "Down with the bedclothes/Up with the nightshirt! Fiddle about/Fiddle about/Fiddle about!" Also, in the Tommy song "The Acid Queen," that character sings that after a session with her, "Your boy won't be a boy no more/Young, but not a child."
Townshend said he hopes his autobiography will be published this year. He added in the statement, "I predicted many years ago that what has become the Internet would be used to subvert, pervert and destroy the lives of decent people." Townshend's aborted 1971 rock opera Lifehouse, completed as a radio play in the 1990s, dealt in part with an oppressive network of computers called the Grid.
"I have felt for a long time that it is part of my duty," his statement continued, "knowing what I know, to act as a vigilante to help support organizations like the Internet Watch Foundation, the NSPCC (the National Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children), and Scotland Yard to build up a powerful and well-informed voice to speak loudly about the millions of dollars being made by American banks and credit card companies for the pornography industry. That industry deliberately blurs what is legal and what is illegal, and different countries have different laws and moral values about this. I do not.
"I do not want child pornography to be available on the Internet anywhere at any time. On one occasion I used a credit card to enter a site advertising child porn. I did this purely to see what was there. I spoke informally to a friend who was a lawyer and reported what I'd seen.
"I hope you will be able to see that I am sincerely disturbed by the sexual abuse of children, and I am very active (in) trying to help individuals who have suffered, and to prevent further abuse."
Townshend isn't the only British musician who's been linked to child pornography. In 1999, Gary Glitter ("Rock And Roll Part 2") served four months in a U.K. jail after being found with more than 4000 images of young girls and boys--ranging in age from two to 10 and in varying degrees of poses and acts--on his personal computer.
Operation Ore, Britain's current investigation into internet child pornography, has resulted in over 1300 arrests.
-- Bruce Simon, New York
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