Pete Townshend banned from the U.S.?

On May 7th something quiet but quite remarkable happened. Pete Townshend (63), guitarist of the band the WHO, was scheduled to have his Sexual Offender status dropped from the British Violent and Sex Offender Register (ViSOR). A confirmation of the action is pending.

Mr. Townshend was arrested in January 2003 as part of Operation Ore, the largest investigation into child pornography in the UK. He admitted using his credit card to access child abuse images but claimed they were for "research" for a book in 1999. (Emphasis added by the Guardian Newspaper - see link below). Mr. Townshend was one of 1,600 people arrested in the UK from details given to an American child porn website.He avoided a charge but was cautioned by the British police and his name placed on the Sexual Offender Register for five years. No evidence of downloaded child pornography was found on his home computers. He did admit that he accessed the child porn site.

The British National Children’s Home (NCH) charity said it was not satisfied with Mr. Townshend's defense.

John Carr, its internet safety advisor, said: "We hope that anybody else out there who might be looking at using the internet to get child pornography for the purposes of research is now properly warned. It is not an acceptable defense and it only helps keep the child porn industry going."

And a spokesman for Phoenix survivors, a group that represents victims of child abuse, said it was appalled at the "leniency" of the punishment.

He said: "He (Mr. Townshend) still insists that curiosity is a fair excuse for the sexual exploitation of children."

When asked, a spokesman from Florida's Tampa Bay Police Department's Child Abuse Unit told this writer that “research” is one of the most commonly used excuses by perpetrators of child pornography site visitation.

You be the judge.

Why bring this up? Because despite all of this the U.S. allows Mr. Townshend entry into the United States against published INS regulations.

The US Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) specifies numerous grounds on which a consular officer can find an applicant ineligible for a visa and inadmissible to the United States. Applicants excludable on criminal and related grounds are the following: "Aliens convicted of, and those who admit having committed a crime involving moral turpitude (or an attempt or conspiracy to commit such a crime)." Many have fallen foul of these regulations.

Take, for example, Lilly Allen, the British singer, who was refused a visa after she assaulted a photographer some time ago in London. A Welch acquaintance of the writer was arrested in New York on a DUI in 2000. His next trip back to the US resulted on his being turned back at the Immigration desk in New York.

Pete Townshend on the other hand comes and goes from the U.S. with impunity. Why is he allowed to do this when his admitted offense - for which he was arrested and cautioned - resulted on his being placed on a Sex Offender list? In the U.S. we punish child sex crimes with draconian ferocity and rightly so.

Mr. Townshend is no exception. Why should being a celebrity give him a free pass?

The WHO, featuring Pete Townshend, are playing nationwide in October.

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Evin Daly is a staff writer for ButlerReport and is also a child advocate in the 15th Judicial Circuit in Palm Beach, Florida, where as a Guardian ad Litem he represents abused, neglected and abandoned children’s interests in court.

Guardian Newspaper Article ('Pete Townshend put on sex offenders register' - May 08, 2003)

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