Legendary Who axeman Pete Townshend is in the “hot seat” over his alleged child pornography addiction. The UK’s Daily Mail newspaper reported on Saturday (January 11) that Townshend’s name was passed along to UK police by the FBI, who were investigating a Texas-based porn site. Townshend apparently used his own credit card to gain access to the site, but the star vehemently denies being a pedophile.
While he admits to visiting child porn sites “maybe three or four times,” he only looked at front pages and previews, and only used his credit card one time, and never downloaded anything. Kinda sounds like “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” or “I didn’t inhale” to me, but he’s not a politician, so maybe the guitarist is on the level. Actually, Townshend has claimed that, while he did visit child porn sites, he did so as “research” for a campaign he is working on against downloading child pornography from the Internet.
NME reports that the legend has already contacted Scotland Yard and offered to hand over his computer hard drive to prove that he has done no wrong. He also made the following statement in today’s Sun newspaper: “I need to regain the trust of police and authorities involved in protecting children to continue to use my energies and determination to help what they doÖI sincerely believed that the police would know my history as someone who works tirelessly to help the abused, and that since 1978 I have run a charity which has contributed millions to organizations working to prevent violence and abuse.”
