Thursday, February 4, 2010
STOP THE WITCH HUNT AGAINST PETE TOWNSHEND
Many of you out there may have heard about Pete Townshend being acquitted over child pornography charges back in 2003 but many of you, especially if you are a teen or in your early to mid 20's, don't know most of the story. Recently two Sunshine State crackpots named Evin Daly and Kevin Gillick who claim to be "defending the rights of children" are trying to drum up support for a grotesque witch hunt against The Who guitarist, by attempting to get him blocked from entering the United States to play at the upcoming Super Bowl where the Who are scheduled to rock half time. They have even gone as far as to imply that he is an "illegal immigrant" and he "destroyed computers" which are both slanderous lies.
Both Evin daly and Kevin Gillick are spending a disproportionate amount of time defaming Pete Townshend when they instead should be safeguarding the lives of children as they so loudly claim to be doing.
By using cheap, false attacks they are attempting to manipulate the media and those who know that Townshend was arrested on page one, but don't realize that he was acquitted and never criminally charged on page 34.
It is important not to go along with the manipulators and nasty people like Evin Daly and Kevin Gillick and instead read the facts for yourself. The unparalleled hysteria that surrounds this issue often distorts the truth and the grave mistakes surrounding Operation Ore , the police investigation that Pete's unjust arrest was connected with.
Frequently asked questions:
So what happened with Pete, I don't get it? Pete Townshend after years of speaking out against child abuse for children's charities (including Double O and Teenage Cancer Trust among many others) was surfing the internet and blogging when the medium was still fairly new. Disgusted over links to Russian child sex trafficking sites that came up simply from typing random words into Google and concurrently engaged in research for A Different Bomb (a now-abandoned book based on an anti-child pornography essay published on his website in January 2002) as well his autobiography, Townshend used a credit card to access a website connected to the Landslide server alleged to advertise child pornography.
"Research" sounds like a bad excuse: Not in this case. Please read "A Different Bomb", available at The Smoking Gun, this is the work Pete was doing and you'll agree he is completely innocent. Pete Townshend, a victim of sexual abuse as child, has always been writing and soul-searching this tragic issue. His legendary musical album and Tony Award winning rock opera, Tommy dealt specifically with over coming an abusive childhood. Pete was addressing many issues regarding broken families and children, decades before it was as commonplace in the media as it is today.
What did the cops find when they searched his computers? Nothing. He went to the front of a site doing research for his work with the anger of any parent vigilante enough to want to know what the hell was going on. All the police found was that he had accessed the front of the site and a few images-none of which were saved to his computer's hard drive.
Did they actually thoroughly search his house though? Yes. The police searched Pete's house and confiscated 14 computers and other materials, and after a four-month forensic investigation confirmed that they had found NO EVIDENCE of child abuse images. Pete Townshend was never criminally charged and served no jail or prison time.
What did the British police say verbatim: "After four months of investigation by officers from Scotland Yard's child protection group, it was established that Mr Townshend was not in possession of any downloaded child abuse images."
Then why was he on the sex offenders list? Pete Townshed is no longer entered on the violent and sex offender registry. Due to a very unfair technicality in the law similar to California's now proven flawed, Three Strikes Law, even a someone found not in possession like Pete was still has to be placed on the list. It's that technicality that Evin Daly and others who subsist off of private funds are grotesquely exploiting and manipulating to wrongly accuse and attack Pete Townshend when they should be going after TRUE child abusers or putting the private funds they receive towards battered women's shelters and foster children.
What does Pete Townshend say? Pete Townshend excepted full responsibility for his foolhardiness and cooperated with the police. He also expressed apologies to charities and investigators. Pete, a father of three successful children who love him dearly, has stated numerous times that he feels child pornography is the most heinous thing imaginable. To this day he has had zero criminal infractions and continues to work diligently for charity, he also has no previous criminal record prior to 2003.
What does the NFL say? The NFL is aware of the truth and that Pete is not a criminal. The NFL looking forward to The Who's performance at half-time. Read NFL VP Joe Browne's response to Kevin Daly's witch hunt attempts here here
Who is Evin Daly? Evin Daly is an untalented and unknown writer from Boca Raton, Florida who is using the manipulation of words combined with falsehoods to slander Pete Townshend. He also runs a right wing website called The ButlerReport.com. Which he claims is "the Best News Source Known to Humanity" and has published a very creepy article about "Men and Porn" . Evin Daly has put a grossly disproportionate amount of focus on Pete who has been proven to NOT be a paedophile or in possession of child pornography. If Evin Daly really wanted to save children from abuse, he would be putting his energies elsewhere. Anyone who claims their own version of the news is the "best known to humanity" obviously has severe ego problems. Compared to the work, time, money and career focus that Pete Townshend has put towards children's charities, Evin Daly is a bombastic joke.
Who is Kevin Gillick? Kevin Gillick is another unknown grandstander trying to make a name for himself by defaming Pete Townshend. He is clearly a bold faced liar who used huge brush strokes in his very weak argument against Mr.Townshend. For instance Gillick claims that "In 2006 Mr.Townshend was "forced to remove a pornographic story from his website" and that it "prompted an uproar from European child-advocacy groups." When in reality, it was a mainstream fictional novel that Pete kindly removed when it offended one group in Great Britain. Like Evin Daly, Kevin Gillick has accomplished very little with his own life and appears to only be making a name for himself via defamation, sophistry and media manipulation.
If Daly and Gillick are so worried about child abuse why are they spending so much time and money going after someone who is not guilty? Judging them by their actions and not their words, they don't seem to be doing much of anything constructive to safeguard the lives of children. Charities that are privately and publicly funded are supposed to be focusing on the most pressing and severe issues, Pete's case which was decided in 2003, hardly qualifies. It could also be that possibly Evin Daly and Kevin Gillick are socio-paths who align themselves with charitable organizations to mask their own perversions; a pattern that is being seem more and more in children's rights issues.
So what was Operation Ore anyway? Operation Ore was a British police operation that commenced in 1999, following information from USA law enforcement, and it intended to prosecute thousands of users of websites reportedly featuring child pornography.
So the accused in Operation Ore committed suicide out of guilt, correct? No, in fact there is evidence that many of the suicides connected to Operation Ore were committed out of sheer terror from being wrongly accused. As one can clearly see, with how much misinformation there still is being exploited by witch hunters like Evin Daly and Kevin Gillick against Pete Townshend-even after a full aquittal-to be wrongly charged with possession of child pornography is very similar to a death sentence.
Did the mistakes in Operation Ore get sorted out? No the British police failed to provide this information to the defendants, and some implied that they had checked and found no evidence of credit card fraud when no such check had been done. Because of the nature of the charges, children were removed from homes immediately. In the two years it took the police to determine that thousands had been falsely accused, over one hundred children had been removed from their homes and denied any unsupervised time with their fathers. One man was charged when the sole "suspicious" image in his possession was of adult actress Melissa-Ashley.[15]
Was there ever an enquiry done? Yes, independent investigators later obtained both the database records and video of the Landslide raid and with this information showed that Michael Mead of the United States Postal Service lied under oath regarding several details relating to the investigation. As a result of these errors, a number of people arrested in Operation Ore filed a class action law suit in 2006 against the detectives behind Operation Ore, alleging false arrest.[16] CEOP and its Chief Executive were accused of using vague terms which do not have a recognised meaning within either child protection or law enforcement when they defended the operation.[17]In 2006 the campaign website Inquisition 21st Century was delisted from Google for allegedly manipulating search results[18] but has since been restored.[19]