Is it a crime just to look at pictures of children?

The trickle of news stories has involved the following: Two politicians (said to be former ministers), a senior customs director (working in computers), civil servants, City businessmen, teachers (including one at a leading public school), university lecturers, magistrates, social workers, police officers (most notably two involved in last summer's Soham murder investigation, most dramatically one who attempted suicide after facing 27 allegations relating to the downloading of porn), lawyers, priests, a "television presenter" and "a legendary rock star".

All these men are among the 7,272 or so whose credit card details were handed to the British police in the wake of the US paedophile sting codenamed Operation Avalanche a year ago. Each and every one, by virtue of the fact that they appeared on the list at all, was a suspect. Investigation of the list has resulted, so far, in 1,300 arrests, with priority given to those who had committed sex offences before, and those who work with children.

At the time of writing though, only one had been subjected to trial by media. Poor old Pete Townshend is busy spilling his guts to the press, desperate to explain that, while his dark places are crepuscular enough to warrant researching a paedophile website, they are not so black that he feels anything but revulsion at what he sees.

His defence is compelling. He says that he looked at child pornography on the internet as part of his work on his autobiography, in which he writes about the child abuse he underwent himself when he was five or six. He cites the rock opera Tommy as containing material which draws on that buried experience, and also much charitable work in which he tries to combat child abuse. His account is entirely credible.

His actions, none the less, are condemned by all of the expert agencies working in this field. Or as Mark Stephens, vice-chairman of the Internet Watch Foundation, puts it: '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." Which is good advice for any person curious enough to imagine for any reason that they may be justified in trying to find and look at this sort of material themselves.

It is not likely, surely, that Mr Townshend will be going to prison, though. Certainly the police do not seem to be in any great hurry to help him on his way there. After all, it was he himself who contacted them when he read about Operation Avalanche, and its little sister investigation in Britain, Operation Ore. They did not concern themselves too much with his confessions then.

For those who believe that there can be no smoke without fire, such an investigation would not mean much anyway. Operation Ore has been criticised in the last year because so much time has elapsed since users were alerted to the fact that they could be traced, that any conclusive evidence could already have been disposed of by now.

In turn, the police complain that inspecting a computer alone costs an average of £2,000 and that they simply do not have the resources properly to investigate the sort of mass allegations of paedophilia that investigations abroad, chiefly in the US, are now generating.

The situation is freighted with irony. The internet has revealed to us how prevalent paedophilia is, and is also – as long as people continue to attempt to make money out of it – providing so much evidence connecting individuals to paedophile rings that our law enforcement agencies are swamped by it.

It would surely be best if all 7,272 British subscribers to this internet site had by now been investigated. Instead, by being put in a position where they have to prioritise, the police themselves are tacitly suggesting that looking at such material is not such a serious matter. The people targeted in this operation are the people the police judge – by the most screamingly obvious of criteria – to be in positions where they may be committing actual abuse.

Their means of doing so are crude, to say the least. I'd feel a little happier with this situation, for example, if the police were not prioritising just previous offenders and those who work with children, but those who have children or step-children themselves. We know only too well now that it is from parental figures that children are most at risk of abuse.

But at the same time I am deeply troubled by the confusion many people feel about the quality of the gaze that is directed at pictures of children. Mr Stephens is right to condemn all consumption of paedophiliac images, but this is not where our only confusions lie. The most absurd recent example of how far our fear of abuse of image can be taken was the school that insisted that parents wishing to record their children taking part in a nativity play must seek written permission.

It is undeniable that paedophiles are themselves at pains to excuse their behaviour when looking at images which have not been procured by abusing children. I have, on other occasions when writing about paedophilia, received awful and pitiful letters from men explaining that they look at images of children – sometimes simply torn from shopping catalogues – and do not think they should be penalised because they are causing no actual harm to the child whose image excites them.

Usually, they claim as well that looking in such a way at such images is a means of controlling their urges. They say that without pictures on which to vent their feelings, they may not be responsible for their actions.

Attempting to get across to them the fact that nobody wants pictures of their children to be used in this way, no matter the lack of actual harm, is nigh on impossible, as I have learnt from trying.

There has been at least one recent occasion in which a British judge indicated that such excuses were legitimate.

The images available through the Landslide Portal, which have given rise to Operation Avalanche, were not innocent pictures, looked upon in a manner that made a travesty of them, but travesties in themselves, in which actual abuse was portrayed. So it is worth thinking about, this paradox whereby Mr Townshend's viewing of images of real harm being done may not lead to criminal liability, while another person's viewing of innocent snaps of bathtime may be freighted with paedophilic intent.

There is an amazingly difficult line to be drawn here, whereby unacceptable behaviour has to be defined not only by the securing of e-mail addresses or of credit card numbers, but by what we feel sure goes on in the mind of the person consuming the image. Can we convict some people for their thoughts, while excusing others, such as Mr Townshend, for their actions?

It seems that until we can find some better way of dealing with paedophiliac intent, we must. Which is why it is wrong that the police did not interview and investigate Mr Townshend, and thousands of others, long ago. I for one would rather that paedophiles stuck to pictures in shopping catalogues, instead of surfing the Net for something whose innocence was not defiled only by the eyes of the beholder.

The mastermind behind the Landslide Portal is now serving an unlikely 1,335 years in prison. But very many of his 300,000 subscribers will simply have moved on to another provider.

d.orr@independent.co.uk