Guess who has been busted for kiddie porn

This was to be expected.

From yesterday's BBC-online:
"[...]
So far, about 1,300 people, including a judge, magistrates, dentists, hospital consultants and a deputy headmaster, have been arrested.

Some 50 police officers have also been arrested and eight of them charged with offences, including two officers involved in the police investigation into the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
[...]"BBC online, January 12, 2003

CNN now has a story on the arrest:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/01/13/uk.townshend/index.html

The CNN article gives a link to the UK law and comments this specially.
Since similar laws are in any European country (with similar punishment), is this such different to US law?

16 Police Officers from the Child Protection Squad, have been at his house for 5 hours now, by mutual agreement.

The laws are state by state here in the US for the most part Walter so it's hard to say exactly but I'd guess that they are pretty close. Possession of indecent pics of a minor is illegal here but exactly what constitutes "indecent" is up to a judge/jury I guess.

I suppose Townsend could form a support group. Pee Wee Herman might be a logical comiserator.


timber

Thanks, fishin'.

Definition of underage people differs from country to country. In Russia, for example, 14-years-old are not considered being minors in everything referring to consent sex. Russian conservative parliamentaries failed to change the consent age to 16 (I must remind that in the USSR consent age was 18). So, the person that may be prosecuted as a pedophile in the U.S./UK is not a trespasser if he/she has an affair with 14 y.o. girl/boy in Russia, Lithuania or Czechoslovakia...

Townshend's statement: http://europe.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/01/11/uk.townshend.statement/index.html

The Who were my favorite group for manyyears, beginning before Tommy and lasting until about Who's Next, after which I more or less lost interest. But this is bad news, because I always admired Pete Townshend. Even if his explanation is true, how could he have been so naive as to use his credit card to view such images? The subject is beyond radioactive.

He should have known better--no matter what he was really up to.

He's out on bail meanwhile.

The following link to the BBC-website (from thisd morning) gives some more, very interesting background links:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2651871.stm

Pete Townsend News

Pete Townsend will always be a great artist, but doesn't this tune, sung by little Tommy, have a new sinister tone?:

See me, feel me, touch me, heal me.

So Townsend may have been "Cousin Kevin" all this time .... who'dda thunk? Sometimes you never can tell with those "Fiddle About" folk.



timber

Oh, sigh. I suppose I have to check all these links.

osso

I spoke before a group of college kids the other day, and one, after I said I used to write rock reviews for a tiny paper, asked me which "classic rock" group I liked best. I hate that term--makes me feel ancient when I remember these guys when they were young and crazy--but I told him the Who.

The kid brightened and said he liked them, too, but now he's tore his Who poster off the wall after Pete's legal problem. Sad...