Posts Tagged ‘ townshend ’

Protect Our Children has challenged the planned visit of a British sex offender scheduled to perform at a concert in May.  Jimmy Pursey, a member of the Punk group “Sham 69″, is slated to appear May 25th, at a music festival called “Punk Rock Bowling 2012″, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In 2002, Pursey received a “Caution” from police in Weybridge, U.K., for committing an Indecent Assault on a teenaged girl.  The British “Caution”, which has no corollary in the U.S., allows offenders to avoid trial if they agree to admit guilt and register with the police.  They are also listed on the United Kingdom’s “Registry of Sexual and Violent Offenders”.

Correspondence sent to John Morton, Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.), renewed the group’s objection to the practice of granting visas to foreign nationals who have been registered as Sex Offenders in their homelands.  The March 14th letter calls the practice “a slap in the face” to victims of sexual abuse.

In a response dated March 26, Deputy Director Peter T. Edge, said the Department of Homeland Security takes the allegations seriously, and has forwarded the information to the D.H.S. field office.

In 2010, the Brevard County charity joined other child-advocacy organizations in protesting Pete Townshend’s performance at the SuperBowl in Miami.  The group, which informs local citizens about convicted child molesters, mailed a sex offender advisory to residents living in the vicinity of the stadium in Miami Gardens.

Immigration officials were also notified that permitting foreign sex offenders to enter the U.S., is in conflict, with the “Moral Turpitude” clause, found in American immigration law.  Townshend, a member of the British rock band: The WHO, received a Caution in 1983 after his arrest for paying to access child pornography.

by Mark Wigley
Winter 2009

While Pete Townshend is tuning up his guitar in preparation for his appearance at the forty-fourth Super Bowl in Miami, child activists across Florida are moving to block the British sex offender from taking the stage.

“This man admitted to using his credit card to view child pornography on the internet,” says advocate Kevin Gillick. “He was a registered sex offender in the United Kingdom. Not only should he be banned from the Super Bowl, he shouldn’t be allowed in this country at all.”

Townshend, 64, one of two surviving members of the iconic rock group The Who, will perform with Roger Daltry at the event in February. CBS made the NFL’s decision public on Thanksgiving day.

Pete Townshend was arrested in 2003 after getting caught viewing multiple kiddie-porn images, including a photo of a two year-old boy being raped by an adult. He excuses the act by claiming he was doing research for a planned book on child abuse. British authorities placed Townshend on their national sex offender registry for five years. He was also “admonished” by police: a quirk of the English justice system by which offenders are brought down to the local precinct and given a “good talking to.”

Gillick dismisses Townshend’s explanation: ”Everyone knows that when you do business with a child pornographer you place an order for his next victim.”

Kevin Gillick is the editor of The Guardian-Brevard, a free newspaper which publishes photos of child molesters along with explicit coverage of their crimes. The paper is distributed in Brevard County; a community on Florida’s East Coast.

“Florida is the place where Jessica Lunsford and Junny Rios-Martinez were murdered by child predators,” he said. “It is the place where Jimmy Ryce and Adam Walsh spent their last days on earth. If the NFL goes through with this performance, they and their sponsors are going to feel the resolve of the people who live here.”

“They will be shocked,” he said. “This is going to be breathtakingly ugly”

A child advocacy group In South Florida has asked NFL Chief Executive, Roger Goodell to drop Townsend from the entertainment venue.

“I trust you will act in the best interests of your audience and advertisers in deciding to drop Townshend from the line-up…” writes Evin Daly in his letter dated November 16.

Daly is the leader of Child AbuseWatch, an internet advocacy group based in Boca Raton. His letter to Goodell points out that Townshend published a salacious story on his blog, describing teenagers having sex. The fictional tale was removed from Townshend’s site after receiving complaints from European child advocacy groups.

The official Super Bowl XLIV web site schedules the game at Dolphin Stadium, February 7, 2010.