Celebrity Disaster

Pete Townshend

Not to minimize the outrage, but what British rocker hasn't had a very dubious past?

Since the story of Townshend sex offender past broke nationally a week ago, which has been a subject of debate and argument, only one question matters.

Was Pete Townshend a registered sex offender in the UK from 2003 to 2008? Answer: Yes.

Well that’s that then. Sorry Pete. This precludes you from not only playing at the Super Bowl, it also stops you from entering the United States to begin with.

Since the NFL decided to hire Pete Townshend for the upcoming Super Bowl event all hell has broken loose. Child AbuseWatch, the international child prevention group, have been trying for some time to bring attention to Townshend’s sex offender status. Most notably was the Kennedy Center Awards event last year when they wrote to the organizers protesting the honoring of someone with sex offender history.

Most recently they have asked the NFL to drop Townshend from the Super Bowl. In a way they are doing the NFL a favor. How? When the family values groups get hold of this they’re going to rip the NFL and their sponsors apart. It could indeed prove to be an incredibly expensive mistake on the NFL’s part to not read more than Townshend publicists take on Pete’s past when they were planning the half time show.

Another national advocacy group, Protect Our Children, headed by Kevin Gillick has taken the NFL protest a step further; two steps actually. They have made a lot of noise with the Immigration and Naturalization Department and ICE begging to ask how a registered sex offender, with criminal record, has been given free reign to enter the US.

U.S. immigration law says authorities will deny entrance to “Aliens convicted of, and those who admit having committed a crime involving moral turpitude(or an attempt or conspiracy to commit such a crime).” Townshend admitted to having broken the law in his search for child pornography. ‘How he has been given access to the U.S. remains a mystery or perhaps it’s another demonstration of celebrity privilege,’ Mr. Gillick said.

The second aspect of Protect Our Children’s campaign has a definitely more local sting in its tail. A letter has been sent to Florida Attorney General McCullom, demanding that Townshend comply with Florida law, specifically Florida Statute 775.21, which applies to anyone with a sex offender background.

All of the criticisms of Townshend are fair. Yes, yes he did break the law:

I ask him when, and how, he first came across child pornography on his computer. 'It was late '98, early '99,' he says, 'and, believe me, that image was not welcome, it was not invited. I did not go looking for it, it just appeared. It was a very cleverly constructed thing; it was shocking and violating. The impact of that one image took me a long time to come to terms with.'

What was the process, though, that led to this image appearing 'uninvited'? Townshend says that he had seen a documentary about a Russian boy adopted by an American family in early 1999, and had rung the the filmmaker, Ethan Silverman, and said: 'I want to do something on these Russian orphanages. I want to find a legitimate way to help financially.' He says he then went online and typed in a string of words. 'I think it was the words "boy", "orphanage", "young", "Russia", and up came the image of this child. The first image I saw I genuinely saw by accident.'

It was this image that led Townshend to believe he could start a campaign that would tackle the problem of internet child pornography. 'I'm not religious,' he says, 'but I am spiritual, and I felt like this was something I really needed to look at as a grown-up living in the real world. I'd come from this world of good, this film where this Russian kid had been saved, into the real depths, the filth and the swill. I started to just look at lists of what was going on, and then I started having conversations with people about what I was seeing, and I got angry again.'

What, though, possessed him to access a pay-per-view child pornography site, to take such a risk, to do something not accidentally but intentionally, not to mention illegally? There are numerous other methods of finding out about the subject - contacting organised bodies, the police, academic research units?

'Well, the thing with the credit card, it's important to look at the actual incident,' he begins. 'What happens is I was looking at a user group somewhere, and this is where you find out about what's really going on. My hope was, and this is one of the reasons why I first communicated with Scotland Yard, I thought that a 12 Step group would be a good thing to have on these user groups, and maybe somebody who had a problem with it might be helped by being guided to somebody who would say, "Don't fucking go there, don't do this."'

He pauses to collect his thoughts, and I am just about to say: 'But you went there, Pete, you were that person', when he says something extraordinary. He says: 'Then I saw sight of this thing - now I'm reconstructing this a bit, I have to confess, because I just vaguely remember this - but I saw sight of this thing that said, "Avoid this site - it's an FBI sting." I remember the name Alberta or the name Landslide. That was in May 1999.' You actually saw this warning on one of the listings, I say, and yet you took out your credit card and accessed the site?

'Yeah. I was really, really curious, and I think that's the mistake I made. I saw that it was a five dollar listing, and that it was in America, and that it didn't promise, contrary to what the police said to me when I was interviewed, to lead to child pornography. I told them, "Well, actually, I don't remember." This is one of the problems - I don't really remember it very well, because I did a lot of searches. I was just meandering around generally. I'd done a fair bit of that, but this was exciting to me - the FBI was running a sting. This is maybe where the naivety set in. I can't remember my state of mind but, looking back, it was stupid and it was wrong. I think I made a terrible mistake.'

Did that not cross his mind at the time, though? He seems to have acted in a manner that was both naive and utterly reckless. 'Worse than naive,' he replies. 'I was fuelled in the smoke of my own compassion, identification and anger. And I found it very difficult to share. I'm not going to beat myself up about that, though, because I felt ultimately I couldn't find people to help. I contacted the NSPCC, and they were about to start a campaign called Stop It Now. I spoke to a helpline called NAPAC [National Association for People Abused in Childhood]; they were struggling for funds. I contacted the Internet Watch Foundation.' He pauses for a moment. 'Look, what I did was wrong. And stupid. The legal position is clear; my experience is clear, my culpability is clear, but my innocence is absolute. I feel completely and totally innocent.'

Townshend's naivete and lack of sophistication with regards to what he did isn't an excuse. It is important to note that Townshend believes that he, himself, was a victim of child molestation and that he, himself, has worked to end it and do something positive. In the end, his misguided efforts tripped him up, and he has been forced to do penance in the British legal system for what he did. Does that mean that he should never be allowed to enter the United States?

Being a successful musician or artist should not allow someone to get away without being held accountable. I see a parallel to the Roman Polanski case, where we have a legal incident from the past being judged through today's view of things. The nascent world of the early "commercial" Internet from the late 1990s and early 2000s has tripped up quite a few people with poor judgement and credit cards.

My feeling is that, yes, Townshend has to register and conform to the laws no matter where he travels and no matter what his penance since then has been. He shouldn't be given special consideration or pardon. He should be treated like everyone else. But, let's remember that the next time Jimmy Page comes to town. Oh, and let's keep it strictly about British musicians or music people in general and let's not forget a few others as well...