Following a four-month investigation, Who guitarist Pete Townshend has been cleared of child pornography charges.
However, London's Metropolitan Police have taken the precaution of placing the rocker on a national register of sex offenders
for paying to access a child pornography site in 1999. The process will involve taking the guitarist's fingerprints, a DNA sample and a photograph.
Townshend was arrested January 13 for plunking down a credit card to view the child porn site, but he said he did so only as research for his autobiography (see "Pete Townshend Arrested In Child Porn Investigation"). He claimed he may have been sexually abused as a child and that he hoped the images might help jog his memory.
In a press statement, Townshend said, "The police have unconditionally accepted that these were my motives in looking at this site and that there was no other nefarious purpose. I accept that I was wrong to access this site and that by doing so, I broke the law."
Police cleared Townshend on Wednesday (May 7) after a thorough examination of computer equipment seized from Townshend's home and office in January revealed no downloaded images of child abuse.
Townshend was the highest-profile figure busted in Operation Ore, the British arm of a worldwide FBI crackdown on Internet child pornography.
This report is from MTV News.
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