Townshend Considered Suicide After Arrest

[MrRant 0]

LONDON - Rock guitarist Pete Townshend (news) considered suicide after he was arrested on suspicion of possessing child pornography, a newspaper quoted him as saying.

 

"If I had had a gun, I would have shot myself," The Observer Sunday newspaper quoted The Who co-founder as saying. "And if I had shot myself, it would have been ... awful because it would have confirmed what everybody thought."

 

He reportedly said that low point came after his arrest in January as part of Operation Ore, an FBI (news - web sites)-led crackdown on Internet child pornography.

 

Townshend was cleared in May 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 he received for accessing a Web site containing images of child abuse.

 

London's Metropolitan Police said after a four-month investigation that Townshend "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 Web site advertising child pornography but said he was doing research for his autobiography and a campaign against child pornography. He denies being a pedophile.

 

The Observer quoted him as reiterating that denial, although he acknowledged that his actions were "wrong" and "stupid."

 

"The legal position is clear, my experience is clear, my culpability is clear, but my innocence is absolute," he reportedly said. "I'm certain of my own standing before God, which is the level at which I'll be judged."

 

He said he looked forward to touring again, but added that "the whole thing has changed my standing in society substantially."

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

I'm reminded of an Elftor strip in which Elftor and Cheesetor save rock n' roll by killing Pete Townshend after forcing him to rape a choir boy...funny shit.

 

Anyways, I always actually thought he was innocent, or maybe just accessed some of these things by accident (since it's fairly easy to type "we are 18" into a search engine and find an abundance of underage sites), but hey...he's Pete fuckin' Townshend, and Elftor is fuckin' hilarious!