Cartoonist Darrin Bell, who won the Pulitzer Prize, was detained on suspicion of having recordings of child sex assault, including ones that were created by artificial intelligence.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children notified the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office that 18 files including recordings of child sex abuse were being uploaded.
According to officers, 134 films of child sex abuse content were found and connected to the same account, which they claimed was owned and managed by 49-year-old Bell.
After executing a search warrant at Bell’s California home on Wednesday, police reported finding computer-generated content and case-related evidence.
He was taken into custody on accusations of possessing and sharing content related to child sex abuse. He appeared in court on Friday and is still being jailed on $1 million bail.
According to the sheriff’s office, he is the first individual in the county to face charges under a California law amendment that criminalizes artificial intelligence-generated content that depicts child sex assault.
In a brief phone chat, a lady who described herself as Bell’s wife asked the broadcaster to “pray for me and my children” but would not elaborate, according to NBC News, Sky’s US partner network.
Bell, a freelancer who received the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning, was referred to as a “well-known cartoonist” by the sheriff’s office.
The Pulitzer Center website stated that his “beautiful and daring editorial cartoons” addressed “issues affecting disenfranchised communities, calling out lies, hypocrisy and fraud in the political turmoil surrounding the Trump administration” .
Bell’s work has been syndicated in national publications such as the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Washington Post. He is also well-known for his series Rudy Park and Candorville.
