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Filed under: In The News
Pete Townshend of The Who. Credit: Hannah Johnston, Getty Images
The locals around Florida's Sun Life Stadium say they won't get fooled again. As The Who comes to town to play the Super Bowl halftime show on February 7, a local watchdog group wants to make sure that area residents know it's a legal matter. The group, Protect Our Children, Inc., is mailing "sex offender advisory" postcards to homes near the site of the big game, warning them about guitarist Pete Townshend's past, when he was charged by British police in 2003 for buying child pornography from a Texas-based Web site.The classic rocker pleaded guilty back then, but said he'd been researching childhood memories of sexual assault for his autobiography. Townshend received a police caution, but was cleared on charges of possession of indecent pictures. As a result, the guitarist was named on the UK sex-offenders' registry for five years.
Protect Our Children, Inc., a non-profit organization located in Florida's Brevard County says it is "committed to fighting the sexual victimization of children," according to its Web site.
The site also says that the advisory was mailed on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 to residents of Miami Gardens, Florida, which is located approximately two miles from Florida's Sun Life Stadium (formerly known as Dolphin Stadium), according to Google Maps. They're hoping that the rocker won't be fiddling about on American soil.
Townshend's arrest was filmed by the BBC as part of a documentary called "Police Protecting Children: Internet Pedophilia". Townshend's attorneys tried to stop the film from airing, but they were unsuccessful, according to The Independent.
The organization One Child International is also protesting The Who's appearance at the Super Bowl, through their Web site AbuseWatch.net.
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
1-29-2010 @ 8:56AM
LS said...Is Protect Our Children going to research every person who has purchased SuperBowl Tickets? How many of the fans that will be entering Sun Life Stadium are on the Sex Offender List here in the U.S.? Are any of the players from either team on the list? How about the masses of press employees that will be there? Other celebrities? Are they running background checks on each and every person, and mounting a leaflet campaign about them, too?
I'm all for keeping pedophiles away from kids. We won't discuss the punishment that I think is appropriate for them. But Townshend was found "Not Guilty" in a court of law. He has had no trouble since then. It is entirely possible that he really was researching sexual abuse (admittedly, there are probably better methods). He spent five years on that list, and now he's OFF.
Further, plenty of situations here in the U.S. have shown how ridiculous the Sex Offender Lists are - thousands of young men are on that list for doing nothing more evil than being an 18-year-old kid kissing (or even having *consensual* sex with) his 16-year-old girlfriend.
"We acknowledge he was not convicted, but he was on [the UK] sex offenders' list," wrote Protect Our Children president Kevin Gillick. "In the United States, you're on a sex offenders' list for life."
This sounds like nothing more than a fear-mongering publicity stunt. And yet another case of "crying wolf". Organizations keep over-reacting like this, and when there's a REAL danger in the neighborhood, people are simply going to toss the warnings, dismissing them as yet another bid for attention.
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2-13-2010 @ 9:41AM
mail said...uh...in protest of the protest, I purchased a new copy of the movie Tommy... Guess I prefer to see Townshend as an artist and genius, regardless of what happened in the PAST.
Please remember that God gave us two eyes on the FRONT of our heads so that we can focus on looking forward rather than backward.
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