|
|
| Joey |
" Police at porn inquiry star's home "
" LONDON, England --Police officers visited the London mansion of rock star Pete Townshend on Monday after he admitted paying to enter a Web site advertising child porn.
Earlier in the day he was reported to have offered to hand his computer over to the police to prove he was not a paedophile.
Townshend, songwriter and guitarist with "The Who," told The Sun newspaper he had invited police to his home to check his computer for child pornography.
Twenty minutes before officers arrived at his home in Richmond, southwest London, on Monday afternoon, Townshend arrived back at the house, the Press Association reported.
A few minutes later, his solicitor John Cohen told reporters: "We are meeting police at the house at 3pm. It's by mutual agreement. We approached the police this morning and said that we should meet."
The move comes after Townshend admitted he had looked at the front pages and previews of child pornography sites perhaps three or four times after accidentally stumbling across one.
His admission followed a report in a British tabloid newspaper that UK police, acting on information supplied by U.S. authorities, were investigating a "legendary British rock star" and deciding whether to make an arrest.
Townshend's name was included in a list of 7,000 people in Britain whose names were passed on to British police by the American authorities who smashed a U.S. pay-per-view service.
He added he had been driven "purely to see what was there" and for research as well as out of anger at how easy they were to access. He denied being a paedophile. (Story)
But the 57-year-old star said he never downloaded the material and only entered a site once using a credit card purely as part of research for a book he plans to publish later this year. (Profile)
But he has come under fire from an Internet watchdog which described the British band member as "incredibly foolhardy, naive and misguided."
Townshend, who is married with children, said: "To fight against paedophilia, you have to know what's out there."
'Wrong-headed'
But campaigners condemned his actions as "wrong-headed and illegal" and described his explanation as "no excuse."
Mark Stephens, a lawyer with Finers Stephens Innocent who founded the Internet Watch Foundation, told the Press Association: "It is OK to lobby. There are many high-profile individuals who fight against child pornography.
"But it is wrong-headed, misguided and illegal to look at or download or even to pay to download paedophiliac material and if you do so, you are likely to go to prison.
"Pete Townshend has admitted a criminal offence and this goes to mitigation and it's a matter for a court to accept if he was merely doing research or something worse."
In his statement, Townshend said: "I am not a paedophile. 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 Web site) about the explosion of advertised paedophilic images on the Internet." (Statement)
Under UK law, it is a criminal offence punishable by up to up to five years imprisonment for anyone to possess indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children. (The law)
But an accused person has a defence if he can show that he had a legitimate reason for having the picture. "
Shiver......................
Developing ...................
{{{{{{{{{{{{{ JOESY }}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
|
|
|
| Nellcote |
Sorry Joey,
BREAKING NEWS ON CNN-PETE TOWNSEND ARRESTED.... |
|
|
| sirmoonie |
Not charged yet though, whatever that means under British law.
This was coming since he basically admitted the crime, good intentions or not.
Real issue for him is whether he can convince people who matter whether his story is true or not. Because he will get convicted of the crime and have to pay fine, enter treatment, etc.
Sad day for Who fans. |
|
CHAT ROOM aka THE FUN HOUSE] [
RESTROOMS]