Townshend listed as a sex offender

By JASON BENNETTO in London

Pete Townshend, the guitarist of the Who, is to be put on the Sex Offenders Register for the next five years after being cautioned for paying to look at child pornography on the internet.

The news that the 57-year-old rock legend will not face a criminal charge for using his credit card to access a website containing photographs of babies and children being sexually abused is the latest step in Britain's biggest ongoing police inquiry.

The investigation, codenamed Operation Ore, may result in up to 6000 people being cautioned or prosecuted for similar crimes.

Townshend's caution has drawn criticism from some child campaigners who said it was far too lenient. But the man himself continued to defend his actions and issued a lengthy statement to reporters and photographers gathered outside his mansion in Richmond upon Thames.

Although a caution may seem like a lenient punishment, it does have wide-ranging implications and could greatly restrict his future movement. One consequence is that he is likely to be banned from travelling to the United States for the next five years.

It was inevitable that the multi-millionaire would be punished when in January he admitted that he had used his credit card in 1999 to access the Texan-based website Landslide Productions, which charges £21 ($37) a month for access to child abuse of the vilest kind.

Investigators have stressed the horrific nature of some of the images and several journalists in Canada, shown examples of the material, needed counselling.

Townshend's credit card details were among those of about 6500 British men, and a handful of women, identified by American postal inspectors during an investigation into the site's subscribers. The details were passed on to the British police about a year ago.

The rock guitarist said that he had been conducting research for an autobiography, which includes passages about his being sexually abused as a child, as well as a campaign against child abuse that he had been planning for seven years.

Police seized his computers and Scotland Yard's Child Protection Group carried out a four-month investigation in which they established that he did not possess any downloaded child-abuse images.

As well as not downloading the images - an offence that attracts a maximum five-year jail sentence - other factors in his favour are that he appears to have made only one credit card payment; he did have a credible explanation for his actions; and he did not have a history of such offences.

Conscious of being accused of favouritism towards a celebrity, Scotland Yard also stressed that they took advice from the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure "fairness and consistency in the handling of suspects across London".

A caution means Townshend has a criminal record and automatically goes on to the register. A sample of his DNA has been taken and he has been fingerprinted and photographed. For the next five years he must notify police of any intention to travel abroad for eight days or more and inform them if he changes his name or address.

He will also undergo a multi-agency assessment to determine whether he is of any risk to children.

A spokeswoman at the American Embassy in London said that anyone with a criminal record would not be given a visa to travel to the US, but they could apply for a waiver. But a US source said that it was "highly unlikely" anyone on the register would be granted one.

In his statement Townshend insisted police had "unconditionally accepted" his explanation that he was doing research for his "campaign" against child pornography.

A spokesman for Phoenix survivors, a group which represents victims of child abuse, said: "We are appalled at the leniency of the punishment Townshend has received.

"He gave money to child molesters, which doubtless paid for the next child-rape photo session.

"It makes little difference to what happens to us if the sex offender is behind the monitor, the lens or the blanket - our suffering doesn't change."

- INDEPENDENT