Thirty-eight years after his debut effort “I Can’t Explain” provided The Who with their first Top 10 hit, it is hard to explain Pete Townshend’s arrest for suspicion of downloading child pornography.
After two searches of his home and business, where police confiscated two computers, police arrested Townshend, 57, under the Protection of Children Act.
The renowned guitarist has not been charged with any crime, but was held for nearly five hours by London police on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children.
The fiasco stems from Townshend’s claims that he was sexually abused as a child, and was using a web site that advertised child pornography to do research for his autobiography. Townshend denies claims that he is a pedophile.
My impulse is to agree with Townshend’s assertions, but I cannot pardon his actions.
Townshend may not be sexually attracted to children.
He may have been doing research for his book due out later this year, but there are a thousand and one ways to conduct intensive research on child abuse.
Using a credit card to download pornographic images is not one of them.
Despite Townshend’s belief that the images he saw on the Internet helped his book, I can’t understand how seeing another child involved in a sexually demeaning act would legitimately jog his memory.
What Townshend should have done was talk to child welfare workers, interview families affected by related incidents, or read information that stimulated his mind – not his eyes.
Those upset by Townshend’s actions should know that the problem does not stop there. His actions only shed light on others who view similar material.
Townshend’s arrest, by far the most public, was part of a specific maneuver by the British police dubbed Operation Ore.
This crackdown on people who view child pornography has cuffed 1,300 suspects in England alone and has tracked 250,000 suspects throughout the world – all made possible by tracing credit card activity.
This sweep of pedophiles in Britain has included dentists, doctors, a judge and a deputy school headmaster.
It’s even more alarming that fifty police officers have also been arrested; 8 of them were charged with offenses.
The arrests of Townshend and the other suspects who have been condemned by this investigation prove that many types of people are drawn to such indecency.
However, Roger Daltrey, Townshend’s longtime bandmate was quoted as saying, “My gut instinct is that he is not a pedophile, and I know him better than most. Pete has perhaps been a little naive the way he has gone about it, but I believe his intentions are good.”
Unlike Daltrey, I can not surmise what Townshend’s intentions were, but I can gather that there are right and wrong ways to do things.
That is what the laws were created for. When a law is broken, there is a price to pay.
Mark Stephens, Vice Chairman of the Internet Watch Foundation said, “It is wrong-headed, misguided and illegal to look at or download or even to pay to download pedophiliac material and if you do so, you are likely to go to prison.”
Sadly, Townshend must have overlooked that information when he was surfing the Internet.
Apparently, he was busy doing other things.
Brandon Lausch can be reached at Goskateboarding2000@hotmail.com
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