Pete Townshend Arrested on Suspicion of Possessing Child Porn
Monday, January 13, 2003
LONDON — Rock star Pete Townshend of The Who has been arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children, police said Monday.
Scotland Yard announced that a 57-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of making and possessing indecent images of children and of incitement to distribute indecent images of children.
Police, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the suspect was Townshend. He has not been charged with a crime. Under British law, suspects are not charged immediately upon arrest, and some people are eventually released without charge.
Townshend, 57, said Saturday he had used an Internet Web site advertising child pornography.
He made the admission after a newspaper reported detectives were investigating an unidentified British rock star for downloading child pornography.
Police said they arrested Townshend under the Protection of Children Act after executing two searches at a business and a home in Richmond, Surrey, the town outside London where he lives. They said they took computers from the home and were examining them.
Townshend was being held at a southwest London police station.
Townshend said in his Saturday statement that he was not a pedophile and only used the porn site once while doing research for an autobiography dealing with his own suspected childhood sexual abuse.
Townshend helped form The Who in London in the early 1960s and wrote most of the band's hits. The title character in Townshend's 1969 rock opera Tommy -- a deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard -- is sexually abused by an uncle.
Their parade of hits included "I Can See For Miles," "Pinball Wizard," and "Won't Get Fooled Again."
Earlier Monday, a group of police officers arrived at Townshend's Richmond home, one carrying a plastic crate containing packaging to store potential evidence.
Townshend's arrest came as part of Operation Ore, a crackdown on people who view child pornography on the Internet.
British police have arrested 1,300 suspects as part of the sweep, including a judge, magistrates, dentists, doctors and a deputy school headmaster. Fifty police officers also have been arrested, and eight of them have been charged with offenses.
Operation Ore is the British arm of an FBI-led operation that traced 250,000 suspected pedophiles around the world through credit card details they used to pay for downloading child pornography. The names of British suspects were passed on to police in Britain by U.S. investigators.
Townshend's friend, the model Jerry Hall, said Sunday he was an "avid supporter" of child welfare charities and had spoken at length about the dangers of child pornography on the Internet.
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