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07/05/2003
Townshend cautioned for accessing child sex site
The Who's Pete Townshend has been formally cautioned today and will be placed on a register for sex criminals for five years after he admitted visiting an internet site containing child porn.
Townshend (57) was formally cautioned at Kingston police station in London and was fingerprinted and a DNA sample was taken. He was arrested in London in January and later admitted to giving his credit card details to a child porn site. He was bailed on January 14.
An investigation by Scotland Yard's Child Protection group concluded that no images from paedophile porn sites had been downloaded onto his home computers.
Police added that the legendary rock guitarist had "co-operated fully with the investigation".
In a statement, Townshend maintained that he had accessed the website as part of research into a book he was writing.
He stated: "From the very beginning, I acknowledged that I did access this site and that I had given the police full access to all of my computers.
"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."
The investigation into child porn internet sites – named Operation Ore – was launched on December 17 and met with enormous success.
The probe, a nationwide initiative between state agencies and the FBI in the US, unearthed details on 250,000 suspected paedophiles and the police admit they have been swamped with information. Over 1,600 people were arrested across the UK as a result of the operation.
(GMcG)
Townshend (57) was formally cautioned at Kingston police station in London and was fingerprinted and a DNA sample was taken. He was arrested in London in January and later admitted to giving his credit card details to a child porn site. He was bailed on January 14.
An investigation by Scotland Yard's Child Protection group concluded that no images from paedophile porn sites had been downloaded onto his home computers.
Police added that the legendary rock guitarist had "co-operated fully with the investigation".
In a statement, Townshend maintained that he had accessed the website as part of research into a book he was writing.
He stated: "From the very beginning, I acknowledged that I did access this site and that I had given the police full access to all of my computers.
"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."
The investigation into child porn internet sites – named Operation Ore – was launched on December 17 and met with enormous success.
The probe, a nationwide initiative between state agencies and the FBI in the US, unearthed details on 250,000 suspected paedophiles and the police admit they have been swamped with information. Over 1,600 people were arrested across the UK as a result of the operation.
(GMcG)
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