Tuesday, 7 January, 2003, 18:16 GMT
Glitter deported from Cambodia

The rock star's current whereabouts are unknown

Shamed rock star Gary Glitter has been deported from Cambodia after serving time in jail there.
Glitter, whose real name is Paul Francis Gadd, was detained over suspected sex offences, the Foreign Office confirmed.
He was in jail on 26 and 27 December and deported on 28 December, it said.
Glitter, who has been jailed in Britain for child pornography offences, is understood to have flown to Bangkok in Thailand.

Deportation challenge
The Foreign Office was unable to say exactly why he had been detained and then deported.
However, according to reports Glitter had been arrested over allegations of assault against young boys.

  The conviction ended
      Glitter's career

His lawyers are thought to be challenging the deportation from Cambodia.
But Stephen Jakobi, of Fair Trials Abroad, said it was "hard to challenge deportation from another country".
"As a foreign national I can't see that he really has any claim to be in a foreign country," he said.
Mr Jakobi added that it was "really rather difficult" to get "proper legal processes" due to Cambodia's legal system.

Campaign 

"There's just no protection for children in abuse hotspots such as Cambodia, Bosnia and Thailand" World Vision

Before his deportation Glitter, 58, had already spent time in Cambodia.
He previously left the country in May 2002, following a police investigation prompted by news of his child pornography conviction in the UK.
He had been accused of no crimes in Cambodia at that point, but the country's Minister of Women's Affairs, Mu Sochua, led a campaign to deport him on the grounds that his presence was bad for the country's image.
Cambodia's deputy prime minister, Sar Kheng, appealed to the Interior Ministry to ask Glitter to leave "as soon as possible" as a "preventative measure for protecting the well-being of our children".

'No protection'

Despite his deportation campaign group World Vision said a legal loophole could allow Glitter to return to Cambodia, as long as his trip is no longer than eight days.
It also called on the government to close the "dangerous loophole" in the way which sex offenders like him are dealt with.
"It's outrageous that a known sex offender who is travelling for less than eight days doesn't have to tell anyone where they are going," it said.
"There's just no protection for children in abuse hotspots such as Cambodia, Bosnia and Thailand."
Cuban girlfriend
In 1999, Glitter was sentenced to four months in a British prison for downloading child pornography from the internet.
He pleaded guilty to 54 offences of making indecent photographs of children under 16 on the internet.
On leaving prison, Glitter first went to Cuba with his Cuban girlfriend but he moved after a newspaper exposed his whereabouts.
He is on the sex offenders' register in the UK.
 

I HAVEN'T BEEN CHARGED WITH ANYTHING... BUT I THINK I'M F*****D

WHO guitar legend Pete Townshend (above, right with Gary Glitter) last night prepared to face a grilling from police investigating internet child porn and admitted: "I haven't been charged with anything? but I think I'm f****d.

The guitarist?who appears on a list of 7,000 paedophile website users handed to British cops by the FBI?fears his reputation may now be in ruins.

"I was worried that this might happen," he said as he stood in a dressing gown on the doorstep of his £5 million home in south west London.

"This will be the most damaging thing for my career. I want to clear my name."

Research

The songwriter, father to three children and separated from wife Karen, is the third major pop star to be linked with child sex abuse.

Singer and broadcaster Jonathan King is serving seven years for sex attacks on five boys. Glam rock singer Gary Glitter was jailed for possessing child sex images and was last week kicked out of Cambodia for offences against young boys.

But Townshend, 57, snapped: "I toured with Gary Glitter in the past but am not him. I have always been into pornography and I have used it all my life. But I am not a paedophile and I think paedophilia is appalling."

Townshend claims he used his credit card to access a child porn site and download sick images as "research" because he was sexually abused as a youngster.

He said: "I have been writing my life story and the research was for a book. I have been in touch with Scotland Yard to tell them what I was doing. I have contacted them but no police officers have contacted me."

Townshend retreated into his luxury home, but later his girlfriend of six years, 28-year-old Rachel Fuller, came out to issue a statement he had typed up on his computer as he began his battle to save his reputation. The statement read:

I am not a paedophile. I have never entered chatrooms on the internet to converse with children. I have, to the contrary been shocked, angry and vocal (especially on my website) about the explosion of advertised paedophilic images on the internet.

"I have been writing my childhood autobiography for the past seven years. I believe I was sexually abused between the ages of five and six and a half when in the care of my maternal grandmother who was mentally ill at the time.

"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, and which will make it clear to the public that if I have any compulsions in this area, they are to face what is happening to young children in the world today and to try to deal
openly with my anger and vengeance towards the mentally ill people who find paedophilic pornography attractive.

"I predicted many years ago that what has become the internet would be used to subvert, pervert and destroy the lives of decent people.

"I have felt for a long time that is part of my duty, knowing what I know, to act as a vigilante to help support organisations like the Internet Watch Foundation, the NSPCC and Scotland Yard to build up a powerful and well informed voice to speak loudly about the millions of dollars being made
by American banks and credit card companies for the pornography industry.

"That industry deliberately blurs what is legal and illegal, and different countries have different laws and moral values about this. I do not. I do not want child pornography to be available on the internet anywhere at any time.

"On one occasion I used a credit card to enter a site advertising child-porn. I did this purely to see what was there. I spoke informally to a friend who is a lawyer and reported what I'd seen.

"I have enclosed my website article about my friend Jenny who committed suicide because of sexual abuse she suffered as a child.

"I hope you will be able to see that I am sincerely disturbed by the sexual abuse of children, and I am very active trying to help individuals who have suffered, and to prevent further abuse."

Townshend, neglected by his hard-drinking saxophonist father Cliff and singer
mum Betty, did base Seventies rock opera Tommy partly on his tormented upbringing.
 

It features a paedophile called Uncle Ernie who molests the main character Tommy.

Yet there are some discrepancies in Townshend's statement and explanations.

His claim to have worked as "vigilante" for the Internet Watch Foundation, set up to protect children using the web, was last night refuted by Roger Darlington, chairman of the Foundation. He said he was not aware that Townshend had been in touch with them.

And Townshend's assertion that he has spoken to police at Scotland Yard is also in doubt. He said he had talked to an officer called Sam Farrow from the e-mail fraud squad.

But in fact police say the only Sam Farrow listed there is a clerk in the publicity department. Soon detectives working on Operation Ore, the largest ever investigation into paedophilia in Britain, will want to question him.

Already 1,300 people have been arrested in the op including 50 policemen, a judge, senior hospital consultants, dentists, and a former deputy headmaster.
Fifty police officers were also held in the nationwide sweep including DC Brian Stevens, 41, of Cambridgeshire police who was one of the family liason officers in the Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman murder inquiry in Soham.

Last night Townshend was with his family, explaining his predicament to daughters Emma, 32, Aminta, 31, and 16-year-old son Joseph.

Earlier Aminta, speaking from her home in nearby Twickenham, said she would stand by her father.

Speaking from her home in nearby Twickenham she told us: "I will stand by him because he is my dad.

"I don't want to say any more because I risk upsetting the rest of my family. I don't know if any of this is true."

The Who keyboard player, John Rabbit Bundrick, said he was stunned that Townshend had been named as the rock star in the child porn probe.

"I just don't believe these rumours. It's got to be a mistake", he said.

"I've known Pete for a good while now and I just don't believe any of this stuff about him that I'm hearing today."
 

TWO LABOUR BIGWIGS IN CHILD PORN INVESTIGATION

Two Labour MPs join rock star Townshend in child porn inquiry
Former ministers reported to be on list of suspects who accessed site

Two MPs are under investigation for accessing child pornography websites as part of a huge police operation that this weekend embroiled the rock star Pete Townshend.

Sources have confirmed to the Guardian that the names and credit card details of the two MPs are on a list of subscribers to a child porn internet portal sent to Scotland Yard by the US authorities.
The MPs, who are both reported to be former Labour ministers, are the latest public figures to become caught up in Operation Ore, the largest inquiry into child pornography undertaken in the UK.
More than 1,300 people have already been arrested as part of the police investigation, including judges, teachers, doctors, care workers, soldiers and more than 50 police officers.

On Saturday Townshend, lead guitarist with rock legends The Who, admitted that he had used his credit card to access a child pornography website. The admission followed reports in a newspaper that Scotland Yard detectives were investigating a "legendary British rock star" and deciding whether to make an arrest.

Townshend will be questioned by detectives and have his computer removed for analysis before police decide whether to press charges.

In a statement, Townshend, 57, vehemently denied being a paedophile and said he had visited the site purely for the purposes of researching a campaign against child abuse and for a book he is writing. The rock star, who believed he was sexually abused between the ages of five and six, said:
"I've been in touch with Scotland Yard to tell them what I was doing. I have contacted them but no police officers have contacted me.
"I was worried this might happen and I think this could be the most damaging thing to my career."
Later, Townshend's spokesman said they had tracked down the officer he claimed to have spoken to in October 2002. Jackie Malton, then a detective chief inspector working in Fulham, said in a statement: "I told him he had two choices, either to contact a former detective inspector who had joined the national crime squad as a civilian working as a computer expert and a former colleague of mine, or that he should contact the paedophile squad at Scotland Yard."

Mark Stephens, a lawyer who founded the Internet Watch foundation, an independent watchdog, yesterday condemned the rock star's actions as "wrong-headed and illegal" and described his explanation as "no excuse"."It is OK to lobby. There are many high-profile individuals who fight
against child pornography," Mr Stephens said. "But it is wrong-headed, misguided and illegal to look at or download or even to pay to download paedophiliac material and if you do so, you are likely to go to prison.

"Pete Townshend has admitted a criminal offence and this goes to mitigation and it's a matter for a court to accept if he was merely doing research or something worse."

Notorious

Operation Ore is the British end of the US justice department's Operation Avalanche, which was sparked when the US postal service closed down the now notorious Landslide Promotions gateway, which is thought to have been used by more than 75,000 people worldwide in the late 1990s.
In August last year a Texas computer consultant, Thomas Reedy, was sentenced to a total of 1,335 years for running the internet child porn empire, which had a turnover of more than $1.4m (£870,000) a month.

Although the ring was technically operating through a "gateway" based in Texas, the material being accessed was sited around the world, principally Russia and Indonesia. This made it harder to crack than standard criminal operations as it was twice as hard for investigators to find out who was behind the websites.

But the fatal weakness in the system was that all the subscribers had to provide a credit card number so that Reedy's gateway could verify who they were before charging them for access to the 5,700 sites within the network.
Once the authorities cracked the code scrambling the credit card numbers they were able to track down the owners of the cards. Records of up to 7,300 UK-based credit card numbers were passed to the national crime squad and individual forces by the FBI in the spring of 2002, and there have been a series of raids and computer seizures in Britain since May.

Because of the numbers of people involved and the complexities of gathering evidence, police prioritised subscribers with previous sex convictions and those who worked in areas that brought them into contact with children. But Operation Ore has also exposed the problems of investigating internet paedophilia and the lack of resources available to police forces.
Although last month the Home Office agreed to allocate an extra £500,000 to support further action for Operation Ore - money that will be used to speed up the analysis of computers - police had been hoping for more than £2m.

Last night, model and actor Jerry Hall defended Townshend, based on a discussion they had had in 1991 about the dangers of child pornography on the internet. Hall, who has known Townshend for 22 years, said: "Pete Townshend is the least likely profile of a child abuser it is possible to construct and that is because he isn't one."

Last month Jim Gamble, assistant chief constable of the national crime squad, said the police could not be reckless about making allegations of abuse. "We have to make sure we get it right," he said.
But he warned that those who had logged on to the websites in the 90s and thought they were engaging in "innocent voyeurism" were in for a shock.
"They would not have realised then that the police would be investigating this now. If you have a propensity for this kind of behaviour, we will find you."

Line of inquiry: police focus on child access

· Launched after FBI passed credit card details of 7,300 UK-based alleged
subscribers to a child porn gateway
·Some 1,300 arrested, including teachers, careworkers, social workers,
soldiers, surgeons, plus 50 police officers
· Forty children - 28 in London - are now under protective care
· The investigation, which will run at least until July, has focused on
anyone with access to children and in positions of authority, such as
police or magistrates
· DC Brian Stevens, 41 - an officer on the Soham double-murder case - has
been charged with indecently assaulting three children and possessing
indecent photos. The charges are not related to the Soham murders

Rock star Townshend arrested and computers seized in child porn probe

Rock legend Pete Townshend was last night arrested by police in connection with child pornography offences.

The 57-year-old Who star, who admitted paying to access a website advertising child pornography but claimed it was purely for research purposes, was escorted by officers to a south-west London police station.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "He has been arrested under the Protection of Children Act 1978 on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children, suspicion of making indecent images of children and on suspicion of incitement to distribute indecent images of children."
The spokesman said two arrest warrants were executed at separate addresses in Richmond, Surrey.
"One address is a business address and the other is residential. A number of items, including computers, have been removed from the residential address for forensic examination.
"The Met are not discussing the matter further. Officers from the major investigations team, part of the Child Protection command, are conducting the inquiry."
Townshend, unshaven and wearing a black jacket, left his house by a side entrance at 7.20pm and was driven off in a metallic blue Toyota Corolla.
"They are probably going to go through the formalities tonight and then call him back at a future date after they have investigated further," the spokesman said.
"It's possible they may take a statement tonight but that depends on his state of mind and whether it's in everyone's interests."
Townshend, whose home was searched by police officers, admitted using his credit card on one occasion to view a site advertising child porn "purely to see what was there" and insisted he was not a paedophile.
Last night two uniformed police officers stood on the doorstep of Townshend's mansion at the top of Richmond Hill, in south-west London. Police had arrived shortly before 3pm, following a prior arrangement with the rock star.
The Scotland Yard officers from its paedophile unit, major investigation team, and child-protection unit are all attached to Operation Ore, the largest ever police investigation by British officers into online paedophilia and child pornography.
The probe has targeted Britons looking to pay to access child pornography web-sites following tip-offs from the US.
Townshend's name was in a list of 7,000 British people whose identities were passed on to British police by the American authority who smashed a US pay-per-view service.
Earlier, Townshend's solicitor John Cohen said: "We are meeting police at the house at 3pm. It's by mutual agreement. We approached the police this morning and said that we should meet."
Twenty minutes later police, including computer forensics officers, arrived with a warrant.
A Scotland Yard spokeswoman at the scene said: "There will be a thorough and detailed search of the premises. It will take as long as necessary."
The development came after Townshend said he was ready to hand his computer over to the police to prove he was not a paedophile.
He said he wanted police to visit his home and check his computer for child porn.
He said he looked at the front pages and previews of child pornography sites perhaps three or four times after accidentally stumbling across one.
But the star said he never downloaded the material and only entered a site once, using a credit card, purely as part of research for a book he plans to publish later this year.
"I am not a paedophile. I'd be prepared to have my computer hard drive analysed. It's important police are able to convince themselves that if I did anything illegal I did it purely for research," he told The Sun.
Since his frank admission at the weekend, Townshend has been rounded on by Internet Watchdogs, who dismissed his explanation as "no excuse".
Mark Stephens, a lawyer and vice chairman of the Internet Watch Foundation said: "If you want to help children you don't pay money to a child porn site.
"We strongly discourage anyone from actively seeking out these images of child abuse because it is against the law."
Townshend said that he had been "deeply wounded" by suspicions that he was a paedophile. The star, who has been publicly supported by many celebrity friends, said he had been writing his childhood autobiography and believed he had been sexually abused between the age of five and six-and-a-half when in the care of a mentally ill relative.
 

Kelly arrested for alleged sex abuse

Television presenter Matthew Kelly has been arrested by Surrey police over allegations of sexual abuse against underage boys. The 52-year-old Stars in Their Eyes host was arrested by Surrey police in Birmingham and was tonight being held in connection with "historic allegations" of sexual abuse against boys under 16. A second man, aged in his late 50s, was also arrested in connection with the same allegations at his home in Edinburgh. A spokeswoman for Granada, the company that makes Stars In Their Eyes, said: "Granada is not making any comment or statement on this issue this evening." A police spokesman said: "Two men have been arrested this evening by Surrey Police in a co-ordinated operation in connection with historic allegations of sexual abuse against boys under the age of 16-years-old. "A 52-year-old man from Chiswick, London, was arrested in Birmingham. A man in his late 50s was arrested at his home address in Edinburgh. "One man has been taken to a Surrey Police station where he will be held overnight and is due to be questioned tomorrow. The second man is being held in a police station local to his address overnight and will be questioned tomorrow. "A number of addresses are being searched in connection with the arrests."

Surrey police say it is not part of the anti-paedophile operation during which rock star Pete Townshend was arrested on Monday.
 

Pop stars targeted in child sex probe

SEVERAL pop music celebrities are at the centre of an investigation into suspected paedophiles, according to leaked documents from the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), writes Robert Winnett.
Jonathan King, the former DJ and music producer, was jailed for offences against children in the same inquiry, codenamed Operation Arundel. Last week Matthew Kelly, an ITV presenter, and Tam Paton, former manager of the Bay City Rollers, were arrested by the Arundel team. Both deny any sexual offence and were later released on bail. Paton was rearrested on drugs charges.

The inquiry, conducted by Surrey police, is focusing on celebrities and other men who went to the Walton Hop, a disco in Walton-on-Thames in the 1970s. King, serving a seven-year sentence after his conviction in 2001, was a regular at the club, which attracted up to 3,000 children and adults
aged 13-21 every week. Many other showbusiness personalities were regular visitors.

One DJ at the Hop, Robert Randall, was convicted of assaulting an underage boy last year. Police documents claim that 'pop stars' were 'also involved in the abuse' involving Randall. He refused to comment on the allegations.

Deniz Corday, former owner of the Hop, who is named in the police report, admitted yesterday he was aware that paedophiles targeted his club. He said he knew of several famous people who had abused children and were still at large. Corday said: 'I saw one of them on television the other night.
I have seen the actor often in films.'

Corday also claimed one of the country's most famous musicians was a paedophile.
 

 

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