Rock legend Pete Townshend remained in seclusion at his London mansion yesterday following his kiddie-porn bust – while an impassioned letter he wrote, denouncing the easy availability of the sickening smut, began circulating in cyberspace.
In the lengthy message to fans, The Who guitarist blasted Internet child-porn peddlers as “criminals” and their sick product as “evil.”
Townshend, 60, posted the lengthy letter – entitled “A Different Bomb” – on his Web site in January 2002 following the suicide of an actress friend who was haunted by the sexual abuse she suffered as a child.
Fans yesterday e-mailed copies of the letter to one another and downloaded it from Internet news sites. One fan who sent a copy to The Post noted, “Unless he knowingly was under suspicion a year ago, this article seems to help support his story.”
Townshend’s story is that he checked out child porn sites “maybe three or four times” and “only entered [a porn site] once using a credit card.”
He did so, he said, while doing research for a book he’s writing about the sex abuse he believes he suffered as a child while in the care of his mentally ill grandmother.
He said that he never downloaded any porn, and insisted, “I am not a pedophile.”
Scotland Yard arrested Townshend on Monday on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children and of inciting others to distribute kiddie porn.
He was released on bail early yesterday after signing an agreement that he would make himself available for further questioning later in the month.
Townshend has remained mum since his arrest. But in his year-old letter, he expressed concern that innocent people could end up under arrest by police on a “witch hunt” to catch anyone visiting illicit Web sites.
He noted that he accidentally stumbled upon a kiddie-porn site in 1997 when he typed several harmless words into a search engine.
“Within about 10 minutes … I was confronted with a ‘free’ image of a male infant of about two years old being [sodomized] by an unseen man. …”
Townshend continued: “I reached for the phone. I intended to call the police and take them through the process I had stumbled upon – and bring the pornographer involved to book. Then I thought twice about it.”
He said he consulted a lawyer who “advised me to do nothing. He advised me that I most certainly should not download the image as ‘evidence,’ so I did as he advised. Nothing.”
Townshend’s arrest was the latest of more than 1,300 in England to date in a far-ranging probe that is expected to reach into Parliament in the next few weeks, according to published reports in London.
MY DE-GENERATION
Pete Townshend denounced kiddie porn on the Internet in an impassioned letter posted on his Website a year ago. Here are some excerpts:
“There is hardly a man I know who uses computers who will not admit to surfing casually sometimes to find pornography. I have done it.”
“The pathway to ‘free’ pedophilic 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.”
“I can assure everyone reading this that if they go off in pursuit of images of pedophilic rape they will find them. I urge them not to try. I pray too that they don’t happen upon such images as did I, by accident. If they do they may like me become so enraged and disturbed that their dreams are forever haunted.”