This came over the wires about 10 minutes ago -- Mike Bennett

LONDON - Rock guitarist Pete Townshend (news), co-founder of The Who, was 
cleared Wednesday of possessing pornographic images of children but still 
was placed on a national register of sex offenders.
That registration was part of a formal police caution Townshend received for 
accessing a Web site containing images of child abuse.


Townshend was arrested in January on suspicion of making and possessing 
indecent images of children. The arrest was part of Operation Ore, an FBI 
(news - web sites)-led crackdown on Internet child pornography.


After a four-month investigation, London's Metropolitan Police said 
Wednesday the 57-year-old rocker "was not in possession of any downloaded 
child abuse images" but had accessed a site containing such images in 1999.


The musician acknowledged using his credit card to enter a Web site 
advertising child pornography but said he was doing research for his 
autobiography.


"I am not a pedophile," Townshend said at the time of his arrest.


The title character in Townshend's rock opera "Tommy" — a deaf, dumb and 
blind pinball wizard — is sexually abused by an uncle, and Townshend said he 
believed he was sexually abused as a young boy while in the care of his 
mentally ill grandmother.


On Wednesday, Townshend acknowledged he had been wrong to access the Web 
site, but said police had accepted he had no "nefarious purpose" in doing 
so.


"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," he 
said in a statement.


Police said it was not a defense "to access these images for research or out 
of curiosity."


As part of the cautioning procedure, Townshend's fingerprints, photograph 
and a DNA sample will be taken by police and he will be placed on a national 
sex offender registry for five years.


Townshend was one of The Who's four founding members, along with bassist 
John Entwistle (news), singer Roger Daltrey (news) and drummer Keith Moon 
(news). Moon died in 1978 and Entwistle died last year, but surviving band 
members continued touring.


The group, founded in London in the early 1960s, was part of the first 
British rock invasion with the Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Their hits 
included "My Generation," "I Can See for Miles," "Pinball Wizard" and "Won't 
Get Fooled Again."








Record reviews and more at http://fufkin.com

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus