I took this from another list and haven't verified the source.
block
Here is a piece written by Townshend himself on the
subject at hand, dating from January 2002, for the publication "Cloud"
(which I'm not familiar with). At any rate, it may offer the reader
another viewpoint on his current set of circumstances.
Be forewarned: it is rather lengthy.
-----------------
When my friend Scott Pellegrino sent me this last summer, I couldn't
figure out quite why I decided to save it. As it turns out, Pete was
then forced to take the essay off his website for legal reasons. And
now he is in a jam with the cops because of just what he is honestly
discussing below.
The story here is NOT whether Pete Townshend is a pedophile, which is
an asinine accusation. It is whether the American and British police
have the right to defile the name of someone, without stepping
forward with so much as a charge against him, just through slander
and innuendo and filth.
It is about whether we live in a police state. I can think of about
1000 more important examples of the fact that we do. I can't think of
a single clearer one.
Subject: Mothers and Sons
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 05:13:58 -0400 (EDT)
This is really interesting. I'd love to get your take on it. I'm
starting to think "Squeeze Box" was a much more important Who song
than I'd thought.
-------------------------------------
A Different Bomb
By
Pete Townshend
January 2002
For 'Cloud'
This past week a friend of mine committed suicide.She was a
forty-something actress, recovering from alcoholism.Although I am a
recovering alcoholic myself I knew her best through my work as a fund-
raiser for treatment for those needing alcohol and drug
rehabilitation.We first met about seven years ago.One day,in an open
counselling session at which adult men and women of all ages were
present,she suddenly revealed her central issue.From as early as she
could remember,as an infant girl she had been sexually abused on a
regular basis by her father,and in his presence by several of his
friends.At first,she referred to her father as a 'priest'.Later she
revealed
that these were
members of some kind of religious cult.A charity with which I am
involved
paid for her
to go for treatment for depression at The Priory last year.She was
greatly
improved when
she came out.Partly I think because her story was believed.She had
felt
safe,and various
innovative new therapeutic techniques promised to help her further.She
became
a day
patient.
Within a few weeks she started to slide again,pleading to be allowed
to
go
back in
for further live-in treatment.There were no further funds available to
pay
for this.After a
month or two,emotionally speaking she was back where she had
started:at
a
rock-
bottom.Her friends endured an oscillating love-loss relationship with
her.She
was funny,
honest,energetic and smart.But she was often desperate for
affection,attention and help.
As a result she could be exhausting.For all of us who helped
her,including
several
women who themselves experienced similar sexual abuse as children,her
suicide
was
both a tragedy and an act of brutal insanity.What pushed this woman to
the
brink was not
self-obsession -though God knows she enjoyed her share,like any
individual
ensnared in
alcohol or drug addiction -it was the fact that she discovered her
father
was
in a new
relationship and had access to some young children.
It seems then that the greatest terror for an adult who remembers
sexual
abuse is the
thought that other children might suffer as they did.
This terror echoes for me.In my writing in the past -especially
Tommy -I
have
created
unusually unmerciful worlds for any infant characters.I am often
disturbed
by
what I see
on the page when I write -never more so than when I draw on my own
childhood.Some
people who were abused in their childhood have written to me to say
how
much
they
identify with the character of Tommy .But what is powerful in my own
writing,and
sometimes most difficult to control and model,is the subconscious
material I
draw on.It
is what is subconscious in me that makes me scream for vengeance
against
my
friend's
abusers,rather than an adult understanding of what went wrong.
I remember no specific sexual abuse,though when I was young I was
treated in
an
extremely controlling and aggressive way by my maternal
grandmother.This
is
not
unusual.It might be described by some as insignificant.Almost
everyone I
know
experienced similar stuff at some time or other -many friends
experienced
more extreme
'abuses'and have no obvious adult vices as a result.
However,today it is difficult to speak out without fear.On the issue
of
child-abuse,
the climate in the press,the police,and in Government in the UK at the
moment
is one of
a witch-hunt.This may well be the natural response triggered by cases
like
that of my
friend who committed suicide.But I believe it is rather more a
reaction
to
the 'freedoms'
that are now available to us all.We can all enter into the reality of
a
world
has hithertobeen kept secret,and we would perhaps have preferred it
stayed
that way.The world of
which I speak is that of the abusive paedophile.The window of
'freedom'of
entry to that
world is of course the internet.
There is hardly a man I know who uses computers who will not admit to
surfing
casually sometimes to find pornography.I have done it.Certainly,one
expects
only to
find what is available on the top shelf at the newsagents.I make no
argument
here for or
against 'hard'or 'soft'pornography.What is certain is that providers
of
porn
feel the need
to constantly 'refresh'their supply.So new 'victims'are drawn in every
day
-customers
and subjects.This is just as true on the internet as it is in the
world
of
magazines and
video.However,what many people fail to realise is how -by visiting
their
websites -we
directly and effectively subsidise pornographers.This is true whether
we
do
so
unwittingly or deliberately,out of curiosity or a vigilante
spirit.Vigilante
campaigners I
have read on the internet say that many porn sites that claim to
feature
underage subjects
do not -in fact -do so.They say that many that are 'genuine'do feature
much
the same
content on the inside as they do on their free pop-up pages that
litter
search engines.So
why do these paedophile pornographers bother with the internet at
all?They
can't be
getting rich from this particular branch of their activities.Why won't
they
remain secret?
This issue came to my attention when in 1997 a man who had briefly
worked
for
me was arrested in the UK for downloading paedophilic
pornography.Until
then
I was
unaware of the scale of the problem.I was cautious of openly
condemning
him
until he
had been tried.He had performed in one of my musicals and was a
popular
figure in the
soft-pop pantomime of the UK music scene.When he went to trial,the
buzz-word
that
the newspapers kept reprinting -that he had allegedly used in his
regular
internet searches
-was 'lolita'.A few weeks into the trial The Guardian newspaper
revealed
that
http://www.uksearchterms.com listed 'lolita'high on the list of the most
searched
words in the
UK ('sex'is often No.1).It seemed to me that there was some hypocrisy
going
on.Who
were all these people typing 'lolita'into their browsers?They were
surely
not
all
paedophiles.Perhaps they were simply curious of what they might find.
The terrible part is that what they found on the internet will almost
have
certainly
found them by return.It is not to suggest that every one of them was
'hooked'as soon as
they found a porn site professing to display underage subjects,it is
to
say
that because
their visit was undoubtedly recorded by the site or sites in
question,the
pornographers
who run those sites would have found validation and commercial promise
for
their
activity.They would then have redoubled their efforts in that area.
Many porn sites use software triggers so that when a visitor tries to
leave
a
site
upon which they may have unwittingly stumbled,another similar -or
worse
-site
immediately pops up.When they try to shut that site,another pops
up,then
another,then
another,the content getting more and more extreme until their browser
is
solid with
pornography and eventually will seize up as though choking on some
vapid
manifestation
of evil itself.Thus it is that the pornographer's 'validation'is
spawned
at
the same time.
One site opened triggers another dozen or more -all of which has been
unwillingly
'visited'.If the visitor so much as click on a newly displayed page
they
may
supply a
record of their computer's unique address.
'Lolita'is obviously not a word to use carelessly when searching the
internet
-even if one
happened to be studying Nabokov for a literature degree.In any
case,the
word
itself is
not of special significance:I had my first encounter with internet
paedophilia by mistake.
Ethan Silverman,a film director friend,had made an extremely moving
documentary about an American couple who adopted a Russian boy.As a
charity
fund-
raiser (and,I suppose,vulnerable philanthropist to boot)I wanted to
support
the work of
such orphanages and decided to see if I could -via the internet -find
legitimate contacts
to help.(I had tried many other methods and failed).The various words
I
used
included
'Russia'and 'orphanages'.I used no words that could usually be taken
to
be
sexual or
lascivious,except -perhaps ill-advisedly -the word 'boys'.
Within about ten minutes of entering my search words I was confronted
with a
'free'
image of a male infant of about two years old being buggered by an
unseen
man.The
blazer on the page claimed that sex with children is 'not illegal in
Russia'.This was not
smut.It was a depiction of a real rape.The victim,if the infant boy
survived
and my
experience was anything to go by,would probably one day take his own
life.The
awful
reality hit me of the self-propelling,self-spawning mechanism of the
internet.I reached
for the phone,I intended to call the police and take them through the
process
I had
stumbled upon -and bring the pornographers involved to book.
Then I thought twice about it.I knew I must NOT download anything I
saw.That
would be illegal.I spoke off-the-record to a lawyer.He advised me
that I
most
certainly
should not download the image as 'evidence'.So I did nothing.I
mentioned
this
shocking
internet experience to a few people close to me.It became clear very
quickly
that some
people I spoke to thought that if I had searched using the right
words,my
exposure to that
terrible image would not have occurred.
It might be strange to hear that I was glad I found it.Until then,like
my
ostrich-like
friends,I imagined that only those who communicated on the internet
using
secret codes,
private chat-rooms and encrypted files would ever be exposed to this
kind of
image.But I
learned through this accident that such images are 'freely'available
through
the
machinery of common search engines and User-Groups,and are openly
available
for sale
through subscription via credit card.I was then concerned that there
would
be
those
'providers'of paedophilic porn who felt the need to regularly
'refresh'their
supply of
images,as is the pornographic 'norm'.It is a chilling thought isn't
it?Even
so,I found
myself wondering whether that thought brought fears for me that
were,perhaps,quite out
of proportion with reality:maybe I was stirring my own subconscious
memories;maybe I
was just being pompous.
Now my friend has joined a long line of suicides who were sexually
abused as
children,and I feel I must speak up.
Since 1997 I have been attempting to prepare some kind of document
with
respect to all
this for wider publication.My feeling is that if internet service
providers
(ISPs)can be
enlisted by the police and other authorities to 'snoop'and provide
information about
customers downloading illegal pornography,they could just as easily
filter
search terms -
or better yet,practice combinations of such search terms on a regular
basis
and then block
specific site names.Many ISPs do such work.It is part of their regular
housekeeping.But
paedophilic pornographers are fearless criminals.Banned sites are
replicated,renamed
and replaced in days.
Why am I suddenly writing this today?My friend who committed suicide
was
the
victim of an active but secret ring of paedophiles.They are still at
large
today.Only those
who knew my friend,and believed her story,feel any urge to speak up
against
her
abusers.But we have no proof.It is frustrating,but for her,at
least,the
pain
is over.
It has all gone public now.On the internet,vigilante groups and
individuals
work
obsessively both to trace and block certain porn sites and to offer
-through
12 Step
programmes for sex-addiction -probably the only way out for some
ensnared by
addiction to what the internet has to offer.Undermining all this good
work,the ISP I use
allows access to User Groups by using the term 'alt'as a prefix.In
'*******'(a popular
search engine)it is possible to reach a questionable array of offered
sex
sites with very
few key-strokes,and without actually typing a single word.The pathway
to
'free'
paedophilic imagery is -as it were -laid out like a free line of
cocaine
at
a
decadent
cocktail party.Only the strong willed or terminally uncurious can
resist.Those vigilantes
who research these pathways must open themselves up to internet
'snoops'.Many
are
obviously willing to take the risk.They believe the pathways
themselves
must
be closed.
Offending sites must be totally and completely eradicated from the
internet.If that is not
possible they must be openly policed by active and obstructive
vigilantes
-not just
'snooped'by government agencies and police.
I understand the police believe that snooping on the internet might
help
them
locate
paedophiles -their philosophy being that it is the ones they don't
know
about
who do the
damage.In the case of my suicide friend I would have to
agree.However,in
other
countries children are not so precious.Brazil,Russia and Thailand all
have
well-known
and tragic orphanages and street-children problems,and these countries
probably provide
source material for many offending sites.
In my work fund-raising in the field of drug and alcohol
rehabilitation
I
have come
across hundreds of individuals from the UK and Europe whose problems
have
been
triggered by childhood abuse.Not always,but often,the abuse is
sexual.Sometimes it is
quite minor,but even in those cases -for some reason -spectacularly
damaging.Not all
addicts and alcoholics are victims.They are,perhaps,a minority.But
among
those
afflicted by addiction abuse is terribly common.In some cases,what is
so
distressing is
how little it takes.For me,a few minor incidents seem to have created
a
dark
side to my
nature which thankfully emerges only in creative work like Tommy .It
is
not
statistically
true that all abusers of children were once themselves abused.That can
happen,but often
-as in the case of my suicide friend -abuse is part of a reward system
of
power conferred
from one adult person to another.But among paedophilic pornographers I
believe
validation matters more than cash.What is certain is that the internet
has
brought the
sexual abuse of children into the open.It is not 'respectable'or
'acceptable'at any level of
society.It is simply in the open.
Many returning from my friend's funeral had wanted to punch her father
who
was
present.But they restrained themselves.Many present were recovering
alcoholics.They
are not given to witch-hunts.They are wary of hypocrisy.But given the
chance,many of
them would have told their own stories about what was done to them by
abusers
sodden
with drink or numb with drugs.But if abusers and their accomplices are
not
necessarily
victims of abuse,and not necessarily men,then they are also not
necessarily
drunk or
drugged.Booze and drugs are here to stay.But it must be time to do
something
more concrete to stop the proliferation of questionable pornography
that
seems so readily and
openly facilitated by the internet.
Another danger is this:I think it must be obvious that many children
are
becoming
inured to pornography much too early and -as I have demonstrated -the
internet provides
a very short route indeed to some of the most evil and shocking images
of
rape and
abuse
1 The subconscious mind is deeply damaged and indelibly scarred by the
sight
of such
images.I can assure everyone reading this that if they go off in
pursuit
of
images of
paedophilic rape they will find them.I urge them not to try.I pray too
that
they don't
happen upon such images as did I,by accident.If they do they may like
me
become so
enraged and disturbed that their dreams are forever haunted.
