A Missouri man has been sentenced to three years in prison after police found pornographic cartoons of children on his computer.
Christjan Bee, 36, of Monett, pleaded guilty to possession of an obscene image of sexual abuse of children. As part of his plea bargain Monday, prosecutors dropped the charges of possessing actual child pornography.
Titled “incest comics” on his computer, the cartoons depicted multiple children having sexual relations with adults and with each other. An official Department of Justice press release said the cartoons “clearly lack any literary, artistic, political or scientific value”—a necessary quality to classify material as obscene.
Bee was discovered in 2011, when his wife called local police, saying she’d found child porn on her husband’s computer.
Exactly what constitutes obscene comics is tricky. In 2011, Canadian police arrested an American man for what they believed were cartoon depictions of child porn, but they dropped the charges in 2012 after deciding it was just manga, a style of Japanese anime. But in 2006, a Virginia man was sentenced to 20 years for charges related to possession of child porn; some of his charges were for anime of girls who appeared underage.
Photo via Monett Police Department