Rocker Townshend cleared of possessing child porn

LONDON -- Rock guitarist Pete Townshend, co-founder of The Who, was cleared Wednesday of possessing pornographic images of children but still was placed on a national register of sex offenders.\nThat registration was part of a formal police caution Townshend received for accessing a Web site containing images of child abuse.\nTownshend, 57, was arrested in January on suspicion of making and possessing indecent images of children. The arrest was part of Operation Ore, an FBI-led crackdown on Internet child pornography.\nAfter a four-month investigation, London's Metropolitan Police said Wednesday the rocker "was not in possession of any downloaded child abuse images" but had accessed a site containing such images in 1999.\nThe musician acknowledged using his credit card to enter a Web site advertising child pornography but said he was doing research for his autobiography. Townshend denied being a pedophile and said he had campaigned against child pornography.\nThe title character in Townshend's rock opera "Tommy" -- a deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard -- is sexually abused by an uncle, and Townshend said he believed he was sexually abused as a young boy while in the care of his mentally ill grandmother.\nOn Wednesday, Townshend said he was wrong to access the Web site, but said police accepted he had no "nefarious purpose" in doing so.\n"As I made clear at the outset, I accessed the site because of my concerns at the shocking material readily available on the Internet to children as well as adults, and as part of my research toward the campaign I had been putting together since 1995 to counter damage done by all kinds of pornography on the Internet, but especially any involving child abuse," he said in a statement.\nPolice, however, said it was not a defense "to access these images for research or out of curiosity."\nAs part of the cautioning procedure, Townshend's fingerprints, photograph and a DNA sample will be taken by police and he will be placed on a national sex offender registry for five years.\nTownshend, known for his windmill style of playing guitar and smashing the instrument on stage, was one of The Who's four founding members, along with bassist John Entwistle, singer Roger Daltrey and drummer Keith Moon. Moon died in 1978 and Entwistle died last year, but Townshend and Daltrey continued touring.\nThe group, founded in London in the early 1960s, was part of the first British rock invasion with the Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Their hits included "My Generation," "I Can See for Miles," "Pinball Wizard" and "Won't Get Fooled Again."\nThe group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.