Did Peter Townshend's arrest and subsequent listing as a sex offender – despite being found to have visited a child porn Website for no reason other than research, as the musician claimed – ward off other celebrities who might have taken an interest in fighting child porn? That's the feeling of a source who has become what some people might think to have been Townshend's unlikeliest supporters: a group of British child abuse survivors.
The Phoenix Survivors are calling on British authorities to remove the co-founder of the Who from the sex offenders' registry to which he'll be listed for five years…barely three months after the group at first had criticized Townshend's activities.
In a page entitled, "Maybe We Need A Stupid Register?", Phoenix Survivors said they changed their original position and came out in support of Townshend because of the evidence secured by police and "the facts, as we now know them," that show Townshend's interest in the child porn site was anything but pedophilic or sexual otherwise.
Phoenix Survivors formed among a group of pedophilia victims in 2000, naming themselves after a criminal investigation known as Operation Phoenix in northern England. Townshend became the highest profile figure in the Operation Ore probes this year, arrested early this year over visiting a child porn site with his own credit card. He maintained from the outset that he'd done so only while researching the subject for a book he planned to write that would visit the subject of child sexual abuse.
The case exposed Townshend – whose earliest music included a few songs dealing with child abuse, like "I'm A Boy" and his rock opera Tommy - to the most embarrassing publicity of his long career, and resulted in his being listed as a registered sex offender for five years, even though police found nothing to indicate he had had any criminal intentions in his doings.
"Pete Townshend is a uniquely rare case," the group's spokesperson, Shy Keenan, said on their Website. "He is no pervert and should have been afforded fairer justice than he received….It is important to keep sight of the victims of child porn, it won't help us one little bit to scapegoat the stupid whilst actual known convicted sex offenders can legally avoid inclusion."
That was at the end of May. This week, in an e-mail made available to AVN Online.com, a supporter of the group's efforts who asked not to be identified, and claimed no direct affiliation with either the group or Townshend himself, said it was "unfortunate" that the anti-child porn cause has lost Townshend as an advocate and that, thanks to his experience, other celebrities whose support might have been invaluable may now fear taking up the cause.
Townshend's supporters argue among other things that his interest in fighting child porn began when his young son stumbled by accident into a child porn site disguised as a child's game. That provoked the musician to research and publish information on child porn on the Internet as well as information on how to protect children.
The Phoenix Survivors say they agree with Who singer Roger Daltrey's earlier suggestion that the Townshend case was more a witch hunt than an honest probe. "We do not believe Mr. Townshend is either a pervert or a pedophile," Keenan has written. "Indeed, he shows many signs of being a victim and certainly falls under the category of 'misguided with innocent intent.' We do not believe he should have paid such a price for stupidity, and we now regret that we didn't stand up for him sooner and offer our support."
