Rock Legend’s Arrest is Tip of Child Porn Iceberg     1/16/2003
By Jan LaRue

Peter Townshend's arrest points to the everyday threat of child porn.

When a public figure of international fame is arrested, media can’t get enough of it. When the charges involve something as serious and shameful as child pornography and pedophilia, it becomes a media feeding frenzy. While it is understandable that a celebrity case generates publicity, there is a danger that the more immediate threat of the everyday child porn consumer is being ignored.

Rock legend Peter Townshend, 57, was arrested by Scotland Yard detectives on charges of making, possessing and incitement to distribute “indecent images of children.” The arrest occurred while police executed search warrants on his mansion. Townshend was released after questioning and has not been formally charged.

Townshend is lead guitarist and composer with The Who rock group, which he helped form in the ’60s. He is married and has children. The title character in his 1969 rock opera Tommy is a deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard who was sexually abused by an uncle.

The arrest stems from information provided by U.S. law enforcement officials who found that Townshend’s name and credit card were entered four times in the database of a couple convicted in the largest child pornography case in U.S. history, which became known as “Candyman.” The database for the Web site contained 360,000 names. Townshend’s information was included in a list given to Scotland Yard of more than 7,200 British citizens, 99.9 percent male, who were in the database. British authorities have dubbed their investigation “Operation Ore.”

Townshend, who denies that he is a pedophile, has admitted to using his credit card on the “Candyman” Web site but says that he didn’t download any images. He claims that it was research for his autobiography because he thinks he was molested when he was about five years old by his evil grandmother.

English law provides an affirmative defense for possessing and distributing indecent images of a child if the defendant can prove it was for a “legitimate reason.” That defense will not help Townshend if he is charged with producing the images. Whether or not Townshend’s research claim is true, lots of books have been written about child pornography and sexual exploitation without the authors’ involvement with the material. The United States child pornography statutes provide no such defense, even for possession.

Until Townshend’s arrest, “Operation Ore” received scant mention by any media outside of Great Britain, where it has received huge, daily coverage because of the continued arrests of men of all ages and occupations. The suspects now number more than 1,300. They include a judge, doctors, a deputy school headmaster, the deputy director of a prison, a civil servant, two hospital consultants, a classics teacher at a public school, and police officers – 50 of them – eight of whom have been charged formally. They are “ordinary and regular” people who are neighbors of ordinary and regular people who have children. Few of them or their children are likely to come in contact with a celebrity like Townshend.

The media will continue to focus on Townshend, and the ordinary and regular folks will miss the bigger picture.

These folks are in close proximity to those who are like the rest of the 1,300 arrested – teachers, cops, medical workers, etc. Pedophiles come in all colors, ages and occupations, including entertainment legends. As physicians say, “When you hear hoof beats, don’t think zebras.” Your children aren’t likely to encounter a zebra, like Townshend, living next door. But they might run into one of those “ordinary, regular folks.”

Jan LaRue is Chief Counsel of Concerned Women for America

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