Looking at the wan, pathetic face of Pete Townshend, the rock musician arrested for possessing child pornography from the Internet, it is hard not to feel a smidgen of sympathy for him. He has not yet been convicted of any offence, and it may turn out that he has not committed one – but his reputation has been destroyed for ever.
Over the next few weeks, we are going to see pictures of many more men peering sadly out of car windows as they are driven off for questioning by the police. More than 7,000 British men are on the list of individuals who have accessed child pornography sites on the Internet. That list was passed on to British authorities by the FBI. The policemen involved in the inquiry have promised that doctors, teachers, judges, politicians and other high-ranking public officials are on it. The officer leading the inquiry has even gone on record to say that he could make headlines every day for a year by exposing the famous names on his list. The lives and reputations of those men will be destroyed, whatever their status. The suggestion that a man has been involved in child abuse creates an indelible stain on his character, a stench which nothing can disguise or remove. Neither an acquittal, nor the dropping of charges, nor even the acceptance by the police and Crown Prosecution Service that they have no merit can eliminate it.
Still, whatever momentary sympathy there might be for Mr Townshend and the others is eliminated by the thought of what they are alleged to have done: pay to see images of children being raped. They are under investigation because they gave their credit-card details to an Internet site providing pictures of the sexual violation of small children.
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