Townshend 'warned of net danger'

By JOHN INNES, Glasgow Record

Jerry Hall, the supermodel and actress, revealed last night how she and rock star Pete Townshend had spoken at length at a dinner party in his home about the dangers of child pornography on the internet.

In a statement publicly defending him, she said that he had advised her on how best to protect her children from inadvertently gaining access to such websites, and insisted that he did not match the profile of a paedophile.

Townshend, 57, who admitted using his credit card to enter a website advertising child pornography, claimed he had done so "purely to see what was there" and was conducting research for a book he plans to publish this year. At the dinner party, in October 2001, he also expressed his fears as a public figure speaking out on such a sensitive subject, Hall said.

Hall, who has known Townshend for 22 years, said: "Since 1992, I have campaigned for both public and private child welfare foundations both in raising public awareness and funds. Pete Townshend is an avid supporter of these causes.

"Over the course of our friendship we also have discussed his belief that he too was abused as a child. He also spoke about his pending autobiography and the difficulty he had in coming to terms with this aspect of his childhood.

"Pete Townshend is the least likely profile of a child abuser it is possible to construct, and that is because he isn’t one."

Townshend was yesterday condemned by internet watchdogs who dismissed his frank explanation for illegally entering the website as "no excuse".

Campaigners argued that his intentions were at best "incredibly foolhardy, naive and misguided", if, as he says, he was conducting research for a book he hopes to publish later in the year.

Mark Stephens, a lawyer with Finers Stephens Innocent who founded the internet Watch Foundation, said: "It is wrong-headed, misguided and illegal to look at or download or even to pay to download paedophiliac material and if you do so, you are likely to go to prison.

"Pete Townshend has admitted a criminal offence and this goes to mitigation and it’s a matter for a court to accept if he was merely doing research or something worse."

The Who star - idolised by fans since the 1960s - said that he had been shocked and angered by the explosion of advertised paedophilic images on the internet and had been curious.

Mr Stephens, who set up the IWF ten years ago and is now vice-chairman, said there were people employed across the globe to combat child pornography on the internet and whose job it was to monitor the content. It was not, he added, the role of a member of public such as Townshend to investigate themselves.

British police are pursuing their largest-ever operation into online paedophilia and child pornography. About 1,300 people have been arrested.