Townshend cleared of possessing child porn

ROCK guitarist Pete Townshend, co-founder of The Who, was yesterday cleared of possessing pornographic images of children but still was placed on a national register of sex offenders.

That registration was part of a formal police caution Townshend received for accessing a website containing images of child abuse.

Townshend, 57, was arrested in January on suspicion of making and possessing indecent images of children. The arrest was part of Operation Ore, an FBI-led crackdown on internet child pornography.

After a four-month investigation, the Metropolitan Police yesterday said the rock star “was not in possession of any downloaded child abuse images” but had accessed a site containing such images in 1999.

The musician acknowledged using his credit card to enter a website advertising child pornography but said he was doing research for his autobiography.

Townshend denied being a paedophile and said he had campaigned against child pornography. Yesterday, Townshend said he was wrong to access the website, but said police accepted he had no “nefarious purpose” in doing so.

As part of the cautioning procedure, Townshend’s fingerprints, photograph and a DNA sample will be taken by police and he will be placed on a national sex offender registry for five years.