Guitarist claims porn used for book research

LONDON -- Guitarist Pete Townshend of 'The Who' said Saturday he downloaded child pornography from the Internet while researching an autobiography discussing his suspected childhood sexual abuse.\nTownshend, 57, denied being a pedophile after the Daily Mail newspaper reported detectives were investigating an unidentified British rock star for downloading child pornography.\nTownshend said in a statement that he informed police of his activities.\n"I have been writing my childhood autobiography for the past seven years," Townshend said. "I believe I was sexually abused between the age of five and six and a half when in the care of my maternal grandmother who was mentally ill at the time.\n"I cannot remember clearly what happened, but my creative work tends to throw up nasty shadows -- particularly in 'Tommy.' Some of the things I have seen on the Internet have informed my book which I hope will be published later this year."\nTownshend helped form 'The Who' in London in the early 1960s and wrote most of the band's hits. The title character in Townshend's 1969 rock opera "Tommy" -- a deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard -- is sexually abused by an uncle.\nTownshend said he was appalled by the growth of pornographic images of children on the Internet and "the millions of dollars being made by American banks and credit card companies for the pornography industry."\nHe said he used a credit card on one occasion to download pornographic images as part of his research and then reported what he saw to police.\n"I am not a pedophile. 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 Web site) about the explosion of advertised pedophiliac images on the Internet," he said.\nPolice in London said they could not comment on individual cases.\nBritish police have arrested 1,300 suspects as part of Operation Ore, a crackdown on people who view child pornography on the Internet.