The Who's Townshend Says 'I'm Not a Pedophile'

Also, as Sean points out, actually paying for the material is pretty dumb. No matter if he does deplore the abuse of children, his credit card has effectively funded it, hasn't it?

Don't know about the latter book mentioned, but I do know that Courage to Heal was pretty notorious for statements such as "if you think you were abused, and your life shows the symptoms, then you were" and "Many women who were abused don't have memories, and some never get any. This doesn't mean that they weren't abused". I think (and hope) later editions removed these statements.

i think the child abuse he can't remember sounds awfully convenient now, way of drawing sympathy.

There's a funny 1975 NME interview with Townshend where he talks about shedding tears after going to the Top of the Pops studio and seeing 15 year old girls screaming for the Bay City Rollers but not for him.

I'm just worried now for the posthumous reputation of Maurice Chevalier. I saw 'Gigi' on TV the other night, and when he sang 'Thank 'eaven for leetle girls' I was thinking sadly 'Watch out, Maurice, you can't do that on stage any more!'

Go on, take a peek, you're really, really curious, aren't you?

So you'd equate singing "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" with viewing explicit child pornography?

I'm saying the sad thing is that nobody could now sing that song (Gigi dates from 1958) without worrying about accusations of pedophilia.

I like to think I could sing 'Thank Heaven For Little Girls' with 'the right' or 'a healthy' mix of smut and innocence ('Gigi' is nudge-nudge about the issue), but I could never be sure that there wouldn't be a witchhunt on the part of a public, or tabloids, or police -- people who simultaneously over-sexualize children and demonize those who over-sexualize them. (This little paradox might explain why 50 police officers are accused alongside Pete Townshend after Operation Ore.)

Bad news for Pete: everything else.

(Since my day job involves working directly with children who have been raped by the "victims" of this supposed "witchhunt," I have something of a personal investment in it and should bow out of this thread before I get all emo and stuff.) I thought your comment was roughly equal to "oh no! PC! oh no!" which I think is a pretty played-out stance, especially with respect to child molestation, which (contrary to over-enthusiastic readings of Nabokov et al) isn't really something reliant on societal contextualization. If not for issues of client confidentiality I'd happily invite you to my workplace so that you might directly encounter the fruits of people having been real "nudge-nudge about the issue."

say, that sentence is pretty good backwards, too

No, I don't think it's PC to over-sexualize children. I think it's hysterical in the classical psychoanalytical sense of that word. Both the abusers and the accusers (sometimes the same people) are hysterical. The last thing they are is politically correct, ie left-leaning. They're both, if anything, on the right: they tend to consdier human nature (including their own proclivities) evil, corrupt and debased.

child molestation, which (contrary to over-enthusiastic readings of Nabokov et al) isn't really something reliant on societal contextualization.

Here I don't really follow you. Is there any social phenomenon which is beyond social contextualisation? And do 'over-enthusiastic readings of Nabokov' really lead us to conclusions about context, ie to thinking about moral relativism? (Isn't 'Lolita' a study of the tragi-comedy of obsession, a portrait of hysteria, a tale of unrequited love?)

Obviously "yes," there are dozens, but as I say I had better bow out of this thread; I must admit surprise at your only allowing one possible reading of Lolita since your fairly radical postmodernist position ("all social phenomena are matters of context") generally holds hands with "all texts are infinite play," or at least "texts generally contain several coexisting meanings," but lat be for now. Again I would encourage you to actually spend some time with abused children before holding forth about whether their suffering is simply a matter of perspective.

I've really got to stop reading Ann Coulter. *sigh*

Good advice for us all.

as for the UK and child pornography, from my understanding it's rather a hot button hysterical issue gone as far as men who still live with their mothers being accused of being child molesters just because they live with their mothers.

Townshend says, "I am not a paedophile, but I did donate money to kid fuckers" and he's given the benefit of the doubt (I'm not saying he shouldn't be).

I wonder what would happen if he'd instead said, "It wasn't me, my credit card was stolen. But nevertheless I have to admit that I AM a paedophile. I can't help it, I have fantasies that involve kid fucking even if I'd never act them out".

I would also like to excuse myself for what was the most backwards of arriving to my point. Very deplorable for an english scholar.

Wouldn't the resources of law enforcement agencies be better employed tracking down those who perpetrate actual sex crimes against actual kids, rather than witch-hunting those who may have happened to look upon the forbidden images?

*(That said, is getting hold of such images without paying harming the porn producers, by RIAA-world logic??)

Jeez, I'm quite scared of even submitting this post in case it looks suspect!

- making c.p.
- selling/profiting from c.p.
- buying c.p.
- looking at/owning c.p.
- fantasising about children

and a legal line gets drawn somewhere as to which is a crime and which isn't. The line is currently in the UK being drawn above the final one, which I'm happy with. But attempts to police fantasies and thoughts always have their negative aspects and this I think is what Momus is worried about.

APNewsAlert

BC-APNewsAlert,0029
LONDON (AP) -- Rock star Pete Townshend of The Who arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children, police say.

(i got this off ceefax and the bbc, so if they screwed up so did i)

The press seem to have been remarkably restrained on Townshend so far, like no-one quite knows how to pitch this story for fear of getting it horribly - or libellously - wrong. Maybe the fact that famous people are being accused of chld molestation could encourage some sort of debate on the whole issue? Wouldn't bet on it, though.

'Outside The Who I am working on a number of projects, which may or may not come to fruition. They all require money of course, so I am glad I earned some this summer. I have a music publishing company, a recording studio, a sail-boat, a domestic life. I also run a really good charity which usually keeps a low profile, but does a lot of valuable work with addicts, alcoholics and both the victims and 'recovering' perpetrators of sexual abuse. But I myself am always a Grade One addict-accident waiting to reoccur. Certainly what I do on stage always surprises me. It doesn't feel like me sometimes. I have to measure my lust for life very, very carefully and I take impartial advice wherever I can on how to live a relatively normal life (I have a counsellor rather than a therapist today). Like most people in the entertainment industry I'm a nut.'

Surely after the 313145342nd windmill guitar riff the excitement palled just a touch.

It seems to me that the logical extension of the UK judiciary's stance that viewing child pornography = paedophilia would be that pretty much everyone who owns a pair of trainers (just for example) should be arrested for complicity in the slave trade.

Anyway, here's an article written by Pete about a year ago. The question is does this further his alibi or was it apart of a clever defense in the event of being found out?

http://www.hecktow.com/pete.html

My understanding (probably a gross over-simplification at best) is that the FBI spent a fortune setting this up but haven't managed (m?)any successful prosecutions in the US because it slipped their minds to check whether there was actually a law on the statute books that they could prosecute the people they caught under....

I'm no lawyer but I'd have thought that if a government body (albeit a foreign govt. body) has deliberately operated a child-porn. website in order to get peoples credit card details so they can identify and prosecute them (which as I understand it is what has happened here) this must surely class as entrapment?

Any legal experts here?

He took his computer into PC World and found someone who was actually able to repair it rather than just trying to sell him another one at an excessive price - I mean what are the chances of that heppening, eh?

Well, as a number of people have already pointed out, it does help to make sense of Tommy.

More to the point however, as a non-Limey I must counsel you to never, ever underestimate the British population's appetite for sordid revalations regarding the private lives of public figures.

The nanny state, yes. And Milton's attack on a nanny state with jackboots, the Cromwellians who proposed that every book being published in Britain had to be submitted for approval to the government first, is still apposite: there can be no true virute, he said, without temptation. In other words, you cannot legislate individual conscience. People must know 'what's out there' in order to know that it's bad. They should not elect censors and customs officials and porn filters to prevent them having to make moral decisions for themselves.

However, things get more complicated when information and the world start to overlap, as they are increasingly. Yes, looking at photos of the holocaust doesn't make you a Nazi. But what if the holocaust were something to do with looking at pictures? What if the more you looked at pictures of dead jews, the more dead jews they created for you to look at? That's the situation with child porn. Looking at it -- and above all paying for looking at it -- actually creates the situation we're talking about, rather than just reporting something that would be happening anyway, or is safely in the historical past.

Sorry for shortening your question, but I don't think its mean has been altered in anyway by doing so.

This wasn't an FBI sting opperation. A man in Texas was discoved by the US postal service (how is a question that hasn't been answered yet) to be opporating a 'gateway' site to many things - including child porn. Basically, people paid to be a member of this gateway site which provided secure links to child porn hosted in foreign countries (Brazil, Russia and I believe Thiland was the 3rd country).

When arrested, his computer and all his billing information was confiscated by the FBI - they then tracked down all the site's members via their credit card numbers - 15,000 of them in total, 7,000 in England - Pete Townshend included.

I think's Pete's alibi makes sense for a few reasons. First off the article that I posted was written in Jan 2002, the Texan responsible for the gateway site wasn't arrested until May 2002 (although it's unclear for how long the FBI were investigating him before the arrest way made). It's well known that he's been writting his autobiography for the past 6 years or so, in interviews he's mentioned that he's been slowed down by lapses of information about a particular time. Its not unreasonable to think these memory lapses are caused by defense mechanism...subconsciously the theme of child abuse has come up in his work (Tommy in particular, but there are other less direct examples). During his career, particularly in the last couple of years (perhaps sparked by his research of his own life) Pete has been vocal about crimes against childeren - he's spoken to friends (who have since come to his defense) about the issue and has been active in several childeren's charities.

I can only think of two conclusions, either what he's saying is true or he's planed ahead and created an elaborate alibi in the event of being found out (yes, he does seem smart enough to do so). I sincerly hope its the former.

Would this hypothesis not also fit the facts:

A well known musician experiences at very least a "morbid fascination" with child abuse; possibly as a result of his own experiences as a child (is it not true that those who have experienced abuse themselves are significantly more likely to become abusers themselves in later life?). He knows this is wrong but cannot control it and this leads him to do charitable work for abused children out of a sense of remorse.

Possible?

Hmmmmm.

Does his work with these charities bring him into contact with a lot of abused / vulnerable children by any chance?

Why I tend to believe Pete (and as a fan I really, really hope he's innocent) is because he seems to smart to be caught so simply. Would a public figure use a credit card registered in his own name to join a site which offers child porn? If caught, wouldn't it make more sense to argue that he used the gateway site for something other than child porn rather than to immediately admit to viewing pics? Would he volunteer his computer to Scotland Yard if he had something to hide? Someone who is less computer savy than Pete might mistakingly believe that something erased from a hard drive is actually deleted, or that IP addresses can't be traced but he knows quite abit about computers or atleast about the internet - it's a topic a frequent discussion at petetownshend.com (his lifehouse work actually predicted the internet and Pete became an early user & advocate of is its development). In my mind, there's too many blunders for someone as smart as Pete to make...or maybe his ego/pomposity interfered with his judgement?

The article talks about Gary Glitter, and I have the feeling that Pete was already worried that his 'vigilantism' would make him the next Gary Glitter (described as 'a man who had briefly worked for me').

I agree with the 'morbid fascination' thing. Townshend says 'The pathway to 'free' paedophilic imagery is - as it were - laid out like a free line of cocaine at a decadent cocktail party: only the strong willed or terminally uncurious can resist.' He goes on to say that police or ISPs should block all access. It's as if he's furious that the 'cocaine' is still there on the mirror to tempt him, entrap him, get him into trouble.

'But what is powerful in my own writing, and sometimes most
difficult to control and model, is the unconscious material I draw on. It is what is
unconscious in me that makes me scream for vengeance against my friend's abusers,
rather than an adult understanding of what went wrong.'

Townshend is, it seems to me, terrified of his own impulses, and as a result blames the internet and calls for the authorities to take away the parts of it that correspond with his own most terrifying urges. Well, you can take away the internet, but can you take away children?

If you think children = sex = a line of cocaine, you have a problem which you have to solve yourself through art, therapy and self-control, not by trying to dismantle the internet.

Fair and thoughtful point, Sean. I'm sure that having a high profile individual address the problem and admit to being a victim of it helps the cause. How much of the populace really would've known about tinnitus -- which I suffer from -- had not....er..... well, Pete Townshend admitted to suffering from it? I just think that in this case, it's such an ugly set of circumstances that it might do more damage than good.

But if, as I heard, they spent a fortune "catching" these paedophiles and then couldn't do anything about it because they couldn't find a law to prosecute them under, it's money down the drain, surely?

But if the actual figures were revealed and people really were staggered by them (and I don't doubt that's true for a moment) is there not also a serious risk that everyone would eventually become desensitised to it and / or start believing that the problem's too big to do anything about and just start accepting it as just another unpleasant fact of life?

The difference between tinnitus and a preoccupation with children as sexual objects is that one is just another little detail you know about someone, whereas the other is likely, in the UK anyway, to become what sociologist Peter Fuller calls a 'master role' -- a role which, once stamped onto you, makes all your other identities pale into insignificance. What we're seeing (and it will still linger no matter what the legal outcome of all this) is the master role 'possible pedophile' being stamped onto Towshend. That is, for him personally, a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions.

Come, on, Pete....

So you don't think everyone on ILM is going to bring up the fact that Alex suffers from tinnitus every time he mentions Killing Joke from now on then?

A well known musician experiences at very least a "morbid fascination" with child abuse...He knows this is wrong but cannot control it and this leads him to do charitable work for abused children out of a sense of remorse.

Entirely possible, and exactly what I fear. If true, it could also help explain his life long battles with alcohol (although its not uncomming for rock stars to have drinking problems!). It might also shed light on lyrics like " "Frisky little children served
up in the nude. Keep them coming if you want my gratitude" (I'm taking that some-what out of context - those words are spoken by a character from The Iron Mad and not by Pete himself).

is it not true that those who have experienced abuse themselves are significantly more likely to become abusers themselves in later life?)

I'm not sure...if so it makes the original crime all the more worse as the cycle of abuse it becomes responsible for.

He knows this is wrong but cannot control it and this leads him to do charitable work for abused children out of a sense of remorse.

Again, possible - and what I fear.

Does his work with these charities bring him into contact with a lot of abused / vulnerable children by any chance?

This I'm not sure about. While I can't claim to know every detail of his charitable work, what he's spoken of publicly seems to be more dealing with helping adults who were victims deal with the problems they faced as childeren. He hasn't (through his web site atleast) mentioned working directly with childeren, although it seems fair to assume that some abused childeren would attend benefit shows etc.

The problem with that is identifying the "original" crime - how far back might you have to go to do that?

"Ultimately, most of us have no idea what child porn looks like, nor will we - unless we have a professional interest - ever meet anyone who admits to knowing. It could be so manifestly real that it's horrific, or it could be as airbrushed as the chicken lady. It could be five-year-olds or it could be pretend 15-year-olds. The only people with the answers are the police - the same police, remember, who can be found storming art galleries because they contain pictures of children on beaches without any pants on."

That's right, I can hear'em (sort've) now: "Ah, that's explains it! No wonder he likes'em, HE CAN'T REALLY HEAR HOW CRAP THEY ARE!"

Fire-dishonoring cheese monkeys, all of you!

You're talking about AVS, right? If so, how did they link PT directly to child pornography? AVS had thousands of pages available, with only a few devoted to that.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2003010596,00.html

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/doc_o_day/petetownshend1.html

'But it is known Cambodian police have had [master status] the beast under surveillance for some time.'

(My sociological tagging.)

Thought experiment: imagine that this was not the case - eg it was all drawn/painted, or was made from photorealistic computer graphics and no-one was ever really photographed or abused - what would we do with the ppl who viewed this stuff.....especially if all they ever did was look at it?
Would social disapproval and ostracism and surveillance be enough?
Or should we imprison/sterilize them too?

I am conflicted about how far we should go with criminalising the act of *looking* unless there is *overwhelming* empirical evidence about some 'monkey see monkey do' effect (and assuming an absence of financial/causal support ref Momus'/Tom's posts above).

Having said that, I think it would be a good thing to keep a watchful eye on ppl who *repeatedly* show an interest in this kind of stuff - for whatever 'reason' - it's the one-shot-trapdoor aspect of this law that worries me somehow.

(There's also a background suspicion of being given 'bread & circuses': the high-profile soft-target individual-monster make-an-example-of-him thing. Maybe I'm just turning paranoid-conspiracy-theory with age....)

What a fuckin mess.

I appreciate that there's not going to be any empirical evidence either way, but do those who have studied child abuse believe that this is happening more and more or is it just being identified and reported more and more?

On one hand I'm sure that child abuse has always happened but I suspect it used to occur largely within the (extended) family group and be dealt with (or not) privately within that group if discovered - so that, with the breakdown of the extended family and increasing geographical separation of relatives that has happened over the last 50 years it is now happening more outside those groups and, added to increased awareness of the issue and improved social services etc., this means that a larger proportion of instances are being identified and reported.

On the other hand I can also see that our society is increasingly sexualising children plus the availability of child pornography on and through the internet together with the increased opportunities the internet provides for individuals with a shared interest in *any* activity to meet, network and share resources etc., must be stimulating both demand and supply.

Which is the greater factor 'though?

I worked for some 17 years with (mostly) teenagers who were victims of some of the most horrendous and serious sexual abuse I have ever heard of - some suffering from as early as a few days old! I was an expert witness in Child Care Proceedings also.

In answer to your question,it is clear that child abuse does seem to be happening more and more frequently, not just the reporting of it.

At one time, I would have argued the former case, but with the explosion of the internet and the isolation of 'marginalised' people, many of whom are victims themselves, the arrival or 'organised' paedophilia is now a common phenomenon.

The ease with which potential abusers can contact young people through IRC and so called chat rooms has made it far easier for victims to be sought out, contacted and subsequently abused.

And let us not forget, the victims are generally the ones who make the initial complaint. More complaints = more victims? Oh, yes.

I'm a U.S. lawyer, so I can't say whether my opinion here would hold any water for PT's U.K. case. However, even if the FBI operated the site for several months after the initial bust, it doesn't sound like entrapment under U.S. law. Generally, entrapment requires affirmative conduct by the police to cajole the targeted individual into doing something (s)he would not have done otherwise. Unless the FBI singled Townshend out and bombarded him with e-mails telling him he'd win a million dollars if he just clicked on this kiddie porn link, they haven't engaged in entrapment.

Is anyone aware of links to information regarding the USPS's bust of the Texas company?

'[Townshend] aurait utilise, a plusieurs reprises, sa carte de credit pour acceder a des sites Internet americains de porno, montrant des photos d'enfants, parfois ages de 2 ans seulement.'

Translation: 'He used, several times, his credit card to get into American porn sites which showed photos of children, sometimes as young as 2 years old.' (My italics.)

I'm actually worried PT may commit suicide as a result of this. That would also, of course, have a political symbolism -- Townshend is one of the 60s generation of 'permissives', and his discrediting, shaming and even hounding to death would have a powerful meaning for the new right. It would help discredit the whole project of 60s liberalism.

Operation Avalanche -- of which Operation Ore is an offshoot -- was initiated by US attorney general John Ashcroft. It marks a return to 'business as usual' for the right wing attorney general after a couple of years of disruption by the war on terrorism (during which time he tried to get Americans to blow the whistle on their neighbours if they found unpatriotic posters etc displayed in their houses). The rumour is that the next high profile British arrests are a popular TV entertainer and two politicians -- Labour politicians.

if PT's explanation of the situation has genuine content — for example, if kerry's interpretation upthread is correct — then he is surely less likely to thrown into despair by the present situation, and to fight back with some force, than if (in fact) he is absolutely guilty as (apparently) charged (all his work has after all been about confusion and addiction and attraction to the destructive, and how you learn to live with all these without harming yrself and others...)

the people likely to be shattered and destroyed are the people who have struggled to establish some kind of respectability for themselves, who have always run away from self-examination...

if the project of 60s liberalism is genuinely unable to draw on its own history and strategies of expression and self-knowledge for intellectual succour, to fight for itself in difficult times, then it really kind of discredits itself (in the sense of: it started fights it couldn't finish)

(probably this is the wrong thread for this particular discussion...)

this operation changes the complexion of that community, but surely in doing so it dilutes the power of the accusation

(it's a classic case of a legal-juridical-punishment system actually producing, extending and elaborating the crime it's been set up to suppress)

Isn't that the definition of legal-juridical systems? They only claim to suppress crimes -- in fact, they create them, together with the penalty for each.

Which is not to say that the things they make taboo are not reprehensible, and wouldn't be unacceptable even in some sort of lawless community.

This is what I mean in my song 'My Kindly Friend The Censor', which ends:

Oh my kindly friend the censor this cannot be what you mean
To distill the very essence of 'obscene'

And I believe this is why so many people who incarnate the law (policemen, educators, social workers) are the very people who become fascinated by the taboos they have set themselves the job of policing, and finally transgress against them, causing, periodically, semi-catastrophic legitimacy crises.

In a way people in Biblical times would totally recognise, the system then sacrifices a few high profile transgressors (the virgins in this case have already suffered enough) and gets on with dividing halal from haram, dirty from clean, people from 'beasts', and your uncle Ernie from your 'Uncle Ernie'.

'rumours up about the guy who presents Stars In Your Eyes and Ph*l C*ll*ns being in Ore remit...'

I have no idea who either of those people are, but there's definitely 'something in the air tonight'.

As for whether it was legal and constitutional for the FBI to set up such a sting operation -- that is, whether it is "entrapment" or not -- the answer to that is that it probably is. You can't "entrap" someone who's already predisposed to a certain behavior, or at least that's what the Supreme Court held (in a case that, interestingly enough, dealt with a federal sting operation against a Midwestern farmer who bought kiddie porn -- I wish I could remember the case name because it's an interesting read, the Feds kept after this guy for years until he finally broke down and bought some kiddie porn). Dunno what the law of entrapment is in the UK, but that at least explains why the FBI's behavior is probably legal under American law.

From what I heard it wasn't the entrapment issue itself but the absence / presence of something in the US laws / Constitution that was preventing them from securing (m?)any convictions over there.

marquis de sade to thread!

pete townshend? wouldn't a man aiming to create greater awareness about the child porn issue be AWARE enough to realise buying child porn with his credit card is really stupid? And I think he can guess what's on child sex tapes without buying and watching them himself. If he's contributing money to child-sex peddlers, he's heightening the problem.

If it is that's another crime that pretty much the entire population are guilty of.

It would give me endless schadenfreude to see R*ss K*mp named by the Witchfinder General, incidentally.

if i wanted to look at child porn, i'd join the obscene publications squad, where my excuse would be cast-iron and my ease-of-access very high

Too many holes in his story for me to believe him, I'm afraid.

hmmmm - is this turning into a mccarthy witch hunt of 'known' gays in u.k. reminds me of something similar in operation child watch in london, ontario when i wsa going to university. they busted about every cruising homosexual.

nb. Don't forget that Operation Ore is targetting repeat offenders - those who go back to the sites again and again.

if the police arrest me for a mugging in mile end and i say "it wasn't me i was flying concorde to nyc that day", then my use of that alibi is (possibly) dodgy, but that dodginess doesn't carry over to the airline pilot next to me in the identity parade

So for instance qns I might want to know the answers to and don't might be:

- are the sites offering actual child porn or just teasing the buyers, a la phone sex lines?
- are the sites simple one-way transactions (site <--> user) or do they have a community element?
- is the material onsite being freshly and originally produced by the site creators for profit or is it being produced by 'amateurs' (i.e. paedophiles abusing children for pleasure who then send it in/sell it on)?
- is there any evidence that non-paedophilic photographs of children are finding their way onto these sites for sexual purposes (i.e. do the scares over nativity play photos/kids in the bath etc. have any basis in reality)?

I can't think of any way to answer these apart from asking one of the people involved in policing the material, or looking myself. The people policing the material surely know, but they're also committed to running/supporting a large-scale police operation and their answers are likely to reflect that. There seems to be precious little independent information about the stuff out there.

I do NOT think that a rock star and his credit card and confessional memoirs is in any way helpful in answering anything - this post is just to suggest that the "well why did he need to look at the site" argument is flawed in my eyes.

[This was kind-of inspired by a discussion on kuro5hin.org where, amongst other things, a man described how he is currently being investigated for possession of a single image he had deleted almost half a decade ago].

Whoops, some of this is covered in the Guardian article, must remember to read next time.

I really do think this is a large part of why people fret.

And why do you think this is Tom? The only logical reason if this proves the case would be because the demand is so high. In which case cracking down on those whose credit cards provide funds to fuel the supply seems reasonable enough to me (as I mentioned above, Ore is said to be specifically interested in those using the site on multiple occasions). I agree about the 'visibilty' aspect you mention but I am also beginning to wonder if we are all guilty of underestimating the extent of the problem.

"Cutting off customers = putting dealers out of business = no more child porn."

This is assuming that the people who make child porn are crims who will just switch their trade to something else - dog porn maybe. I'm not convinced this is the case - I suspect that the people running c.p. sites collect the stuff and distribute it at least as much as they make it. I'd guess private individuals making and trading it, and also people trading the huge bank of existing images (since once a photo is taken and scanned it is potentially immortal) accounts for a huge amount of the trade. Trading rings are also, as Operation Ore demonstrates, safer than paying for the material.

It all depends on who is producing c.p.. If it's criminals, OO will help a lot. If it's paedophiles, I don't think OO will help much because they dont care as much about profit.

I don't think Operation Ore is a bad thing, or that possessing child porn shouldn't be a crime - I do wonder whether it's the most efficient way of tackling the roots of the c.p. problem.

I also think that fines are a much better way of prison for dealing with child porn buyers/owners - putting them in jail costs more, cuts them off from society and increases the likelihood that the only people who'll socialise with them are paedophiles - a recipe for repeat offending and more serious involvement.

I still don't think OO will act as a deterrent - people who want/need the material will get it through other avenues: they already know it's illegal after all, even if they don't think it's 'wrong'.

Another thing that occurred to me - in the states Kevin Mitnick was forbidden to use computers while serving the terms of his hacking sentence. A potential parole clause for OO suspects, perhaps?

Well, what's the line? Is it OK to pay money to people to provide images to aide your fantasies? Its a big fucking question, and I agree that our prison system is not going to help anyone except a few politicians and police statisticians.

Yeah, maybe you're right that OO's impact will be negligable. I was hoping I suppose that the fear of being caught and 'exposed' might be enough to stop paedophiles following their desires (the panopticon premise). But then suppression of a genuine desire, no matter how heinous, is likely to lead to destructive outpour...

The parole clause suggestion is interesting but how the fuck can you enforce that? It smacks of the kind of useless rhetoric peddled by desperate authorities who want to look like 'something is being done, the problem is under control', you know? It seems to me that the marriage of contructive rehabilitation with the need to stem paedophilia is a long way from being a reality.

As I understand it, Pete Townsend has actually admitted to much if not all of what he's been accused of. If this is so, why would he be let off with a caution rather than taken to court - and what sort of message do we think this sends out to other paedophiles and would-be paedophiles?

Also, I am reliably informed that the laws in this country are still not quite draconian enough for anyone to be put on the Sex Offenders Register unless and until they've been taken to court and found guilty.

The only possibilities that occur to me are that either:

1. the media's got it all wrong, the police / DPP can't pin anything on him - or at least not enough to make it worth the trouble and cost of a court case - and therefore he isn't actually going to be recorded on the sex offenders register at all.

OR

2. Mr Townsend's lawyers have managed to do some sort of deal whereby he avoids getting a criminal record which might have prevented him from ever working overseas again. In which case:
a) when was this two tier justice system introduced (rhetorical question, obv., it's ALWAYS existed) and
b) why does our legislature's concern that children may be at risk from Mr Townsend (thus making it necessary that he be included on the Sex Offenders Register) apparently only extend as far as protecting children who are resident in the UK and not those overseas?

Anyone got any thoughts / insights?

Whether this is a fair punishment for paying the initial fee to obtain access to that kind of internet site is open to debate. But I don't think Townshend has been treated with undue leniency as the law stands.

Then, and only then, maybe, people will make their own minds up.

But CAN they? As I said above, I have been reliably informed that people CAN'T be put on the Sex Offenders Register unless and until they've been tried and proven guilty.

If they CAN then this raises ENORMOUS human rights issues, doesn't it?!?

I don't know what the man's done or not done, but a little logic and consistency in the way our laws are operated would be nice, don't you think?

Your faith in our media is certainly touching, if somewhat misplaced imho.

"The principle that for certain minor crimes you can be found guilty without going to court, by admitting (or not contesting) the charge and accepting the prescribed punishment is pretty well established - driving offences spring to mind."

If you are recorded on the Sex Offenders Register this means that you are considered to be a potential risk to children - I would hardly describe that as a minor matter (and I'm sure you wouldn't)!

In any case, receiving a caution and chosing not to turn up in court to collect a fine and a few points on your driving licence are entirely different things. Just because you choose not to turn up in court does not mean that you aren't duly tried and found guilty in absentia.

You will also get a police record as a result of your driving offence whereas cautions do not form part of your permanent record.

The Sex Offenders Register on the other hand is actually MORE visible (at least within the UK) than your police record.

If he gets a police record 'though, that's going to seriously damage his livelihood. Hence why I suspect some deals may have been made and some rules conveniently bended.

OK, we'll see who turns out to be right, the BBC or your social worker friend.

"If you are recorded on the Sex Offenders Register this means that you are considered to be a potential risk to children - I would hardly describe that as a minor matter (and I'm sure you wouldn't)!"

What I meant was that Townshend has accepted that he is guilty of an offence meriting a caution. In that sense the law regards it as a minor offence. The point about this kind of procedure is that it to some extent shifts the burden of proof or presumption of innocence: you are in effect guilty unless you take active steps to demonstrate your innocence, by disputing the charge in a court of law. Our society has taken the view that this is acceptable in the case of minor but not serious offences. Whether you or I agree that this particular offence is minor is a different matter.

My understanding (again from the despised media, but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt) is that Townshend WILL have a criminal record.

Anyway, it seems that in addition to accepting the caution (read "as part of the deal") Mr Townsend has also agreed to plead guilty to the relatively minor offence of (I'm paraphrasing here) encouraging the production of child porn by paying to obtain it.

Hence he _will_ be tried (even if he doesn't have to turn up in court because he's pleading guilty) and (presumably) _will_ be found guilty, so that he _does_ get a police record, which in turn will mean that he _can_ be places on the SOR.

Whether that's enough of course is another question altogether.