Police to quiz Who star

Pete Townshend faces questioning by police this week after he admitted using a child pornography website.

Scotland Yard detectives will ask the Who star's lawyers to arrange a meeting following his astonishing public confession that he broke the law.

They will want to know exactly how many times he used the site and why. And they will want to find out if his email address is linked to anyone else under suspicion for accessing the perverted images.

Father-of-three Townshend, 57, insists that he is not a paedophile and that he called up the site for research purposes.

But whatever his motives, his actions were described as 'foolhardy, naive and misguided' by a leading charity.

The maximum penalty for possessing indecent photographs of children is five years in jail and an unlimited fine.

Multi-millionaire Townshend made his admission after the Daily Mail revealed on Saturday that an unnamed rock star was at the centre of a police inquiry into allegations that he viewed child pornography on the Internet.

His name was one of 7,272 passed to UK detectives by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service which smashed a pay-per-view Internet ring last year. Within hours of the article appearing, Townshend released a statement saying he had been the victim of abuse in his youth and that he surfed the Internet to research an anti-child-pornography campaign.

Yesterday a spokesman said that Townshend had simply viewed the images and not downloaded them on to his hard drive.

It was claimed that his personal assistant, Nicola Joss, telephoned Scotland Yard last October to let police know he had used the website.

The spokesman said a statement had been obtained from an officer working in Fulham who spoke to Townshend that month.

Jackie Malton said: 'I told him he had two choices, either to contact a former Detective Inspector who had joined the National Crime Squad as a civilian working as a computer expert and a former colleague of mine, or that he should contact the paedophile squad at Scotland Yard.'

Townshend's younger brother Paul, 46, added: 'I know what Pete was up to and we have the proof which will have him completely exonerated. It will come out in the next couple of days. Nicola rang, I believe, to ask permission for him to access this website as part of research for his book. Why he actually used his credit card after that I don't know.'

Supporters of the star were also circulating an essay he wrote 12 months ago, an abridged version of which we print on the left.

Entitled 'A Different Bomb', it details the musician's alarming fears and self-confessed fascination about the growth of Internet paedophilia.

It is also claimed that Townshend lodged three complaints about the website in e-mails to the Internet Watch Foundation, a charity which tries to close down depraved websites.

But yesterday Mark Stephens, founder of the IWF, said it had no knowledge of any such messages. He added that whatever Townshend's motives, he had 'no excuse' for his actions.

'There are many high-profile individuals who fight against child pornography,' he said.

'But 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. If this goes to mitigation, it's a matter for a court to accept if he was merely doing research or something worse.

'It isn't easy to find these websites and as he himself found out, you need to pay for it. He may well have been curious, and many people are, but it's a high-risk game and he's not stupid. What he has done is incredible naivety at best.'

The statement by the Who star said: 'I am not a paedophile. I have never entered chat rooms on the Internet to converse with children.

'I have, to the contrary, been shocked, angry and vocal ( especially on my website) about the explosion of advertised paedophilic images on the Internet.'

As well as support from his family, backing for Townshend came from Mick Jagger's former wife, Jerry Hall.

Miss Hall, who has known Townshend for 22 years, said that her friend had supported her campaigns on behalf of child welfare charities.

'Pete Townshend is an avid supporter of these causes,' she said.

'In addition he advised me on how to prevent my children from inadvertently gaining access to such sites.

'As his fans and indeed the media well know, Pete Townshend has always been publicly and brutally honest about himself and his shortcomings.

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