When Pete Townshend was accused of being a pedophile in 2003, he says he considered killing himself. A victim of child abuse himself, he says, “I thought if I went to court they would rip me apart. If I had a gun I would have shot myself. It really did feel like a lynching.”

In 2003, Townshend plunked down $14 in an attempt to prove a connection between banks and child porn websites. This led to his being arrested and placed on the U.K.’s sex offender list. 

Townshend writes about that chapter in his life in his memoir, Who I Am, which is out next week.