What a mess Pete Townshend has got himself into!

Photographs of him taken during this last week, since those first revelations that the rock star had been named in allegations about visits to child-porn websites, show a man who appears to be sickeningly aware of the awfulness of his situation and haunted by regret.

Good. Let's have more photographs like that of those who've been caught dabbling in this sick internet trade (even if it is only in the interests of "research").

There seems to be more and more evidence that child pornography is addictive. Those who investigate it out of curiosity risk becoming hooked on it, especially if they're of an addictive nature - though God knows why anyone would want, "out of curiosity", to see young children being sexually abused by adults.

There has to be some deep-seated problem present in individuals to prompt that need-to-know.

The porn peddlers understand that well enough, of course. They lure people into their website, sow the seeds of evil in already-fertile ground, and another paedophile is created - someone who might or might not go on to abuse children himself (or very rarely herself) but will certainly add to the growing market for this vile material that's available to anyone for a few clicks on a keyboard and the passing-on of a credit-card number.

And to feed demand, more and more youngsters all around the world will be abused, having their innocence, their childhood and sometimes their life stolen from them.

That's why it's vital that every time a high-profile individual is discovered to be nurturing this wickedness, in however fringe a way, the law throws the book at them and the glare of publicity gives them nowhere to hide.

Operation Ore, the massive national police campaign to unearth the perverts, seems to be doing a good job of flushing them out. A prison governor, police officers, top civil servants, politicians, teachers and youth workers are reported to have been among those arrested so far in this swoop.

At present, everyone who has ever visited an internet child-porn site will be running scared, waiting for that police knock on their door and for their computer to be taken away for examination. And the extensive publicity given to the arrest of famous faces will stand as a warning, a deterrent, to others.

The greater the chance of them being discovered and exposed, the easier they might find it to resist taking those first few clicks into the world of images which could lure them into a nightmare.

Pete Townshend's ordeal might yet lead to some good.

e-mail:mike.priestley

@bradford.newsquest.co.uk