Missouri resident, Christian Bee, faces a potential 3-year prison sentence over “incest comics” found on his computer.
On Monday, the US Department of Justice’s “Project Safe childhood” initiative revealed that 36-year-old Missouri resident, Christjan Bee, has pleaded guilty to obscenity charges after police found “cartoons” depicting child pornography on his computer. Under the terms of Bee’s plea agreement, the government will recommend a sentence of three years in federal prison without the possibility of parole. The sentencing hearing will be scheduled after the United States Probation Office conducts a pre-sentence investigation.
The police discovered Bee’s stash of pornographic comics after his wife contacted the Monett Police department and claimed she’d found child pornography on his computer. Police officers promptly obtained a search warrant and confiscated Bee’s computer.
Project Safe Childhood was launched in 2006. The initiative aims to “combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.” It also seems to have declared itself an arbiter of artistic merit, adding in its press release that Bee’s comics “clearly lack any literary, artistic, political or scientific value.”
Bee has technically been charged with possession of “obscenity,” which under US law includes “a visual depiction of any kind, including a drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting, that – (1)(A) depicts a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and (B) is obscene.”
In February of last year, Christopher Handley was sentenced to six months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release and five years of probation, after he pleaded guilty to possession of obscenity in the form of “drawings of children being sexually abused.”
More recently, Sweden’s Supreme Court acquitted manga translator, Simon Lundström, overruling two lower court convictions that deemed his collection of loli-manga constituted child porn.
Source: Ozarks First
Published: Oct 19, 2012 05:55 am