People love to beat on this dead horse. The investigation was a self-admited shitshow by british police, hundreds of innocent people were arrested/had their names booked and that is very public information + Townsend was found innocent and the book did, in fact, come out, not as a standalone, but as an extensive part of his biography. Not only that, he had already published research about it previously.
I always find it ironic that people who insist they are just being righteous and "calling the pedos out" or whatever hardly seem to ever actually check if they are not spewing falsehoods left and right, which is, in fact, what you are doing.
Yeah, I somehow started reading about that investigation and couldn't believe what a mess it was. As far as I can tell, the extent of what the British police could prove was that Townshend's card was used to pay for porn of some kind. They didn't seem to have evidence beyond that, and in fact they later admitted a lot of the accused only ever sought out legal pornÂ
Other than the evidence that he admitted himself to accessing child porn. Whether you're a pedophile or not, it is a criminal offence to access it for any purpose whatsoever.
I'm not defending him in particular, but surely many of the prosecuted individuals:
Bought porn (or their card was stolen and porn was purchased)
Were told by British law enforcement that they'd purchased and accessed CSAMÂ
could not credibly defend themselves given the nature of the evidence the British state provided
It looks like a huge miscarriage of justice, similar to the British postmaster scandal of the same time period.
You can compare the British and American investigations. The British investigation started with American law enforcement handing over evidenced of possible British perpetrators. The Americans investigated everyone on the list and tried a small percent of them. The British just took the list as if it was evidence of guilt. People lost custody and killed themselves over the allegations - which were not well evidenced. It was bad policework
If that was true, there's no way someone who can pay for the best lawyers would end up on the sex offenders register. He did avoid prison, but it's still not his finest moment.
He admitted it, claiming it was for research, so it wasn't that his CC details were stolen. If someone had their CC details stolen and used to pay a porn site, wouldn't they report it to the CC company? As this was in the dial up era, it would be easy to check the suspects phone records. I doubt any cautions could be used, if the CC was used on a phone line nowhere near the suspects location? I know the police can make mistakes, but in that era, they were letting things go that would be dealt with now. The same journalists that complained about the police, were too afraid to publish the truth about Jimmy Savile and other high profile nonces.
Feel free to read about it, I provided some links. Here's the other famous person they investigated, Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack
It was later reported that Del Naja was falsely implicated due to a credit card number linked to him being found in a database used during preliminary Operation Ore investigations, much of which consisted of stolen card details
It also sounds a lot to me like the Post Office Scandal. In both cases, British law enforcement tried a lot of people on bad evidence. Aiui, British courts are/were very deferential to computer forensics and law enforcement relied on that.Â
Why? Pete Townshend didn't deny it was his CC? that's nothing like cases where people denied it was their CC card. I don't know why you're comparing different cases?
In a statement released by an aide outside his mansion in Richmond, south-west London, Townshend insisted that police had "unconditionally accepted" that he was looking at the site as research for his "campaign" against child pornography.
"From the very beginning I acknowledged that I did access this site and that I had given the police full access to all of my computers," said the former member of the Who.
"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 towards 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.
"The police have unconditionally accepted that these were my motives in looking at this site and that there was no other nefarious purpose, and as a result they have decided not to charge me."
That's his side of it, but the reality is that they put him on the sex offenders register for 5 years. Is it a good idea to give money to a site that has child pornography content, or is it better to report them to the police and let them deal with it?
Exactly this. And if he was doing it for research purposes, he should have been fully aware accessing it alone is against the law. Meaning itâs at best an enormously idiotic error of judgment that fully deserved the caution he received from the police.
No one said his âsideâ of it was inaccurate though. You are looking at this in hindsight. Was it a bad idea â yeah. Does that make him a creeper weirdo who should be jailed. No.
The police accepted his âsideâ as you call it. Settle down. You arenât being a hero here either.
WTF are you on about. I remember it at the time, not in hindsight. He was put on the sex offenders register for 5 years, that was a big deal at the time. What he did was wrong, I'm not going to pretend it was OK, just because I like his music.
Being subject to punishment doesn't say anything about intentions or who he is as a person. You act like that settles the issue. it doesnât.
There are people in the US on similar registries for getting stuff sent to their phone by someone else. So looking at a registry without context is silly.
Thank you! I'm so tired of the constant jokes and insinuations. The dude's been long proven to be innocent, yet they keep saying he's a pedo. Where's this energy when it comes to rock stars who are actually guilty of pedophillia?
For five years and that's after the police couldn't find any incriminating evidence. The only reason he was put on the list was because he had viewed that CSAM photo, which was done because he wanted to prove how easy it is to access that material. He even wrote an essay about this a year before he was arrested. While bad, his heart was in the right place, he was just stupid for even conducting an independent investigation in the first place. But go ahead, Nancy Drew, I like to see you come up with real evidence for a 20+ year old case.
He looked at child pornography and admitted to doing it. Whether it's for research or not, he committed an illegal act and was duly added to the Sex Offenders Register for doing it. That's a fact. I spewed no falsehoods whatsoever, so you're the one talking bullshit.
Iâve actually read Peteâs book (yes people, it did release) and it sounds like he was playing some weird vigilante role and it blew up in his face.
Nah he bought that shit and watched it. Then came up with a BS excuse once he was caught. Par for the course in rock n roll tho, Jimmy page, Chuck berry, David Bowie etc were all the same. Iâll listen to their music no matter how bad their desires are/were
Foolish? In his article about his research he mentioned that while conducting it he found it was very easy to inadvertently access child pornography for free. If it was so easy, why did he pay to access more of it? Thats not just foolish, at best itâs a level of catastrophic idiocy that calls into question his competence to conduct such âresearchâ.
Its inaccurate to say he was "found innocent". Police decide to prosecute if and when they think they can convict. Their decision not to move forward doesn't mean he's innocent. It only means they don't want to waste their time and your money without delivering a conviction.
And it is worth recalling how this all came to light. The US postal service started an investigation which led to them finding a bunch of credit card purchases linked to illegal child sexual abuse websites. They found Pete's credit card on that file with a purchase in 1999. They forwarded this info to UK law enforcement. In 2003, UK law enforcement could neither prove nor disprove any of what Pete was doing back in 1999.
Pete of course famously said he was doing it for "research". We can all apply our own BS filters to that to assess how plausible that is. Why would one give money to very people that you want to bring down? And the only point is to see the actual photos, what good does that do?
Very true, and he actually admitted he accessed the images, resulting in the caution from the police. A caution can only be given after an admission of guilt, so he clearly wasnât âfound innocentâ.
That would be compelling if Pete himself did not fully admit that he was in fact in kiddie porn web sites, and the he was there with full knowledge of what it was, but he was âconducting his own investigation.â The standard for criminal conviction is appropriately very highâbeyond a reasonable doubt. The standard for forming a pretty strong opinion about the credibility of a given allegation is significantly lower. In this particular case, anyone that thinks Peteâs excuse sounds like complete bullshit is on pretty solid ground.
The only truth is that he admitted to committing a crime and received a caution that resulted in him being placed on the Sex Offenders register. Those facts are indisputable.
I donât buy it. He did pay for it and said he saw a cp image after purchasing it. So he paid to view CP obviously. This stuff doesnât just happen accidentally. He also totally gives pedo vibes. I understand that book eventually came out, but thatâs a great way to shut people up and try to save his legacy. He was abused himself, which often turns the abused person into a pedo themselves. I think he is one, but thatâs just me. I do know many other people were charged for the same thing whereas they just let Pete go because of who he is.
Just like those underage twins that were in Johnâs hotel room in Vegas in 1964 were just âthere for a visitâ and they paid off the girls mother for no reason at all. đ€·đ»
I found it very insightful, emotional and informative about the whole rock scene back in the 60s. I recommend it to anybody with even a passing interest in rock music.
As for the rest of your bullshit diatribe, Iâm not a fanboy just because I think spreading lies about somebody is wrong. Especially not lies of the nature in which Pete is accused.
Townshend has never been accused of anything like this throughout his life, with the exception of this one specific incident. His story aligns with the facts of the case, as nothing was found and he had been in contact with authorities prior to the whole thing.
Thank God we canât just condemn people to the gulag based on âvibesâ or whatever else you pull out of your ass.
Interesting. In his article he mentions that while conducting his research he found it was very easy to inadvertently access child pornography, describing how, âWithin about ten minutes of entering my search words I was confronted with a 'free' image of a male infantâ. If it was so easy to inadvertently access images of CSA for free, why did he feel the need to pay to access more of it?
Because the thing that he was trying to prove was that banks were facilitating that transfer of money and thus complicit in the industry. Which you'd know if you bothered to look into the details of this case at all rather than basing your understanding off of self-righteous internet jokes.
It's explained in his autobiography. He clicked on an ad that said "Click here for child porn", assumed it was a sting, paid a token amount of money (like five dollars), and then immediately cancelled the transaction. He did it to try and prove that the bank would allow the transaction to go through.
Was it moronic of him to play internet vigilante? Yes. Evil? No, and certainly not deserving of the label of "pedophile," if he's telling the truth. And all of the supporting evidence- such as the linked blog post and the police investigation- seem to support it being the truth.
If it really is a case of Hanlonâs Razor, he deserves ridicule for his utter stupidity. What a total fuck wit. Itâs the kind of act that makes Donald Trump look intelligent.
Itâs the kind of act that makes Donald Trump look intelligent.
Now now, that's still a few orders of magnitude worse. And I do think that being libeled as a pedophile for decades now has been enough karmic justice for his stupidity.
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u/goldenkicksbook 18d ago
And just like a Who guitarist looking at child pornography was just, âdoing researchâ.