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Darrin Bell Arrested on Suspicion of Child Pornography Charges

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From NBC Bay Area News:

A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist with Bay Area ties has been arrested in Sacramento County on suspicion of child pornography.

Darrin Bell, 49, a famed cartoonist who got his start at UC Berkeley, was arrested Wednesday and booked into the Sacramento County jail on possession of child porn, according to Internet Crimes Against Children detectives who were tipped off by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

In a search of Bell’s home, investigators found 134 videos of child pornography linked to an account owned and controlled by Bell as well as computer generated/artificial intelligence child pornography, authorities said.

From BNO News:

Sgt. Amar Gandhi, of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, said the investigation began after someone uploaded 18 files containing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to an online service. Further investigation revealed a total of 134 videos containing CSAM.

A search warrant was executed at Bell’s home on Wednesday after it was determined that he owned and controlled the account, Sgt. Gandhi said. Bell was taken into custody and booked into the Sacramento County Main Jail for CSAM possession.

Gandhi said this is the first case in Sacramento County involving the possession of AI-generated child pornography. The law making this a criminal offense took effect on January 1.

From the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office Facebook:

Yesterday morning (January 15), ICAC Detectives served a residential search warrant at Bell’s home. Detectives recovered evidence related to the case, as well as computer-generated/AI CSAM. Bell was subsequently arrested and booked into the Sacramento County Main Jail for the possession of CSAM. He is currently in custody being held on $1 million bail and is scheduled to appear in court on January 17.

His booking photo is not available for public release, per California law.

From the Shore News Network:

SACRAMENTO, CA — Darrin Bell, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post, was arrested Wednesday in Sacramento County on suspicion of possessing child pornography, authorities announced.

Bell, 49, was taken into custody by Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) detectives after a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children led to an investigation.

This is a developing story.

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Comments 38

  1. Irony 101
    For years Mr. Bell and I both drew for COUNTERPOINT -a collection of the best editorial cartoonists working today. In July of 2023 I was fired bc I wouldn’t stop defending children from groomers by drawing cartoons pointing out “drag queen story hour” was a front to sexualize children using public spaces/libraries and schools as a cover. I even wrote that “it was a hill I would die on”. And I did.

    As far as I know Mr. Bell still works for COUNTERPOINT. -ML

    2. I don’t see the follow-through from child porn to drag queens.
      Now if you would be foursquare against those child beauty pageants…

    3. Personally, I don’t get “drag queen story hour.” I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just have a woman read to kids if you want someone who looks like a woman to read to kids. But calling these people “groomers” and “pedophiles” is gross calumny. That is a horrible thing to accuse someone of, and if you don’t know it, it’s disgusting.

      I really like Mr. Bell’s work, so this saddens me. Yes, withhold judgment, but this looks really bad. And uploading CSAM material to the internet? Why would you do that unless you WANT to be caught?

  2. I knew there’d be right-wing asswipes trying to politicize this for their agenda.

    1. Yeh, really annoying to draw a line from drag queens to child sexual abuse.

      I appreciated Darrin’s work, so this is a sad day.

    2. Bell was a political cartoonist who drew political cartoons, sometimes defending people whom were accused of grooming children.

      1. Provide examples. I don’t recall any.

  3. Ugh, this is rough. I remember reading “Candorville” as a teen, and frequented at Darrin’s comic strip message board back in the day.

    And it never occurred to me that AI could be used for THIS, but, of course….

    1. The success of any new communications medium depends on its ability to distribute pornography. Consider the printing press, photography, videotapes, the Internet, and now AI. In his series Tales from the White Hart, the science fiction author Arthur C Clarke wrote a story about an inventor who created a machine that replicate the sensory impressions of people. The first one was of a gourmet eating a fine meal. The next one…you can guess. He also wrote I Remember Babylon, where he had a (fictional) conversation about China planning to use communication satellites (which Clarke invented) to beam shows (I think his example was a tour of erotic Indian art) with accompanying propaganda directly into people’s homes. Virtual reality, anyone?

      My Clarke references are from memory, clarifications and corrections welcome.

  4. Good to see Clay Jones come out and take a stand against those who take a stand against child predators.

  5. Mike Lester, that’s not true, and you know it. You were fired due to years of toxic behavior toward Counterpoint management and your Counterpoint colleagues. Given that Counterpoint cartoonists work closely together — despite profound political differences — your habitual attacks on your colleagues were a serious problem. Even many of your conservative colleagues complained to me about you.

    But as problematic as your colleagues found you, many of us still expressed sympathy and support for you when you told us one day on Slack that your wife had been in a car accident the night before. You accepted our expressions of support even though you left out some key details. It wasn’t until months later that we discovered that your wife killed someone else while driving drunk. You manipulated us and played on our sympathies.

    And given your own arrest for domestic violence and your own assertions that you were unfairly arrested, I would think you might be more circumspect about the arrest of a colleague, or at least wait until more is known.

    Counterpoint is a much more peaceful place without you. My only regret was tolerating your toxic behavior as long as I did.

  6. FWIW, this is the statement Counterpoint released. We’ve already had one media inquiry:

    We are dumbfounded by the news that Counterpoint newsletter contributor Darrin Bell has been arrested on charges of uploading AI-generated child sex abuse material. While we are aware that the American system of justice presumes innocence until proven guilty, we feel it necessary to suspend Mr. Bell from future contributions to Counterpoint until more is known about the charges.

    Counterpoint Licensing and Syndication also distributes the Rudy Park comic strip by Darrin Bell. As Mr. Bell is no longer producing new Rudy Park comics, the feature now consists of rerun strips. Counterpoint Media intends to consult with client publications to discuss the future of this daily feature.

  7. Not all pedophiles are pederasts. Some of them suffer in silence, never acting on it.

    So is AI porn, of any kind, so bad? If it satisfies a pedophile, and harms no one, it seems more of a solution than a problem.

    I am aware that Bell had other CASM, I’m not referring to that particular instance, especially since, as Nick Anderson writes above. I will forswear judging him. But I think a discussion of AI porn and its implications just might be useful.

  8. The ones who are quickest to cite, “innocent until proven guilty”, when it fits their political agenda are the quickest to leap to conclusions and claim “guilty” when it’s on the other side of their political agenda. While “innocent until proven guilty” only applies to a court of law and not the court of public opinion, lets try waiting until facts come out.

    1. I do want to hear a statement from Darrin before I comment further. What we’ve heard about what the searches found are a little confusing.

  9. The day’s of arguing about the Valerie Plame scandal with Wiley and Darrin on Toontalk when I was a young lad were a lifetime ago. This came across my feed, a blast from the past. I knew this was the only site left were cartoonists say things without being buried by commentary from people who don’t draw like us. Cartoonists.. yes. We are an affinity group. Although I’m not really a cartoonist, I’m close enough. The problem is, the whole career of an editorial cartoonist is built upon righteous indignation; ruthlessly skewering political figures like, oh I don’t know… tell me who I’m thinking about.. Yeah.. that guy. Well now Darrin is in the same precarious position as Mr. T. Can Bell emerge from this and continue the same shtick, without being humbled in any way shape or form? The answer, unfortunately I think, is yes. So there’s a bright spot for yous.

  10. Wow. Even Bell’s defenders seem to want to assign him a place in some taxonomy of sexual perversion.

    I see a lot in the reporting about accounts and computer that Bell “owns and controls” but in case you’ve been under a rock for, well, the past few decades, you will understand that control of computers and accounts is more tenuous than you might like to believe.

    For me, the cognitive dissonance between “The Talk”, and behavior that would seem to invite scrutiny from law enforcement is difficult to get past.

    Thanks to Clay Jones for modeling discretion around this.

  11. I would like to know why my comment was deleted? I said that I met Darrin at the Reubens last summer, enjoyed speaking with him and meeting his charming family, that I love his work, and I am deeply shocked by this news. I agree with Richard Furman that this seems completely out of character from the author of “Candorville” and ” The Talk”.

    AI is not original. AI takes material from the entire Web and combines it into a new image. What needs to be known, I think, is whether the images in question were films, photos, or illustrations. The first two could be based on actual children, or not. It’s getting harder and harder to tell.

    1. Just got here this morning Nancy and I’m not finding any earlier comment by you. I certainly didn’t delete any of your comments.

      1. Thank you, D. D. I responded to this post very early in the morning, and it possibly did not upload. I’m also having trouble posting now. I have to reload the page then paste in the copied text before hitting “Post Comment” or else it simply does not work. I’ve tried this four times now.

    2. Comments to this blog often get lost when an ad reload forces a page refresh. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been begging for the opportunity to pay for an ad-free experience.

      It’s best to compose comments in a text editor and paste them in.

  12. What about Darrin Bell’s Candorville comic strip? Will it temporary go into reruns or will the strip be declared ended unless there’s a new artist to take Darrin Bell’s place?

    1. As of this morning King Features has made no statement
      or responded to inquiries about the situation.
      Reminder: Darrin Bell has not been found guilty of the charges.

      1. Please remind me: What crimes were Scott Adams and James Allen found guilty of before they were fired/cancelled from their strips?

      2. Apples and origami. Adams and Allen committed no crime, but were found guilty in the court of public opinion for exercising their free speech rights to say things (in Allen’s case on his employer’s social media) that were anathema to many. Rob Rogers was fired for speaking his mind in his cartoons that his publisher found odious, not for criminal activity. The Charlie Hebdo cartoonists received severe punishment though perpetrated no crime.

        Whether Bell is found guilty or innocent his career will suffer greatly (and already has).
        If you think otherwise then, as they say, you got another think coming.

      3. The same “crime” as Kathy Griffin.

    2. In today’s Washington Post,* Candorville was replaced by Six Chix.

      *I know, I know, but it’s my local paper and really does have local news.

  13. Oh man. I feel like this is my Neil Gaiman moment; I don’t know Neil so don’t really feel his disgrace in my gut, but consider Darrin to be a friend and it hurts. Although I’ve only met him in person a few times, we go back to his old Toon Talk board 20 years ago and have enjoyed good-natured arguments about Star Trek (as I recall, he foolishly prefers Picard to Kirk). I also thought his book, “The Talk,” was one of the best and most important books of the year, and told him so. We exchanged warm words when he won the Pulitzer. Reading “Candorville” in my newspaper every morning was like checking in with an old pal.

    So what do you say? He’s not the person I thought he was? I’d like to hear his version of events. I like to think I’m not the kind of person who abandons a friend and kicks him when he down, but if the charges are true he deserves all the legal, social, and professional consequences. In any event, regardless of the legal process, his cartooning career is over, which is sad because he’s a good cartoonist.

    If the charges are true, it’s a tragedy for him and his blameless family, and I mean “tragedy” in the old Greek dramatic sense of a downfall brought about by one’s own flaws.

  14. T.H. Steady – good question!
    This’ll be fun to watch to see if KFS says ANYTHINg!

    1. They were so obnoxious that they alienated too many customers, so their employers cut them loose. It’s called capitalism. Deal with it.

    1. No. But using a company’s branded asset as platform with which to hold forth in ways that are inconsistent with the brand may be considered, by many employers, cause for dismissal. KFS was wise to find a creator who already had an asset of her own as a vehicle for her views, and would therefore be unlikely to appropriate theirs.

      1. “Wise”?
        I don’t know if I would ascribe that word …
        Rather , I’m reminded of the old “birds of a feather …” adage..
        In short – hire someone that thinks/acts like you and you’ll never have to tell them what to say, to get your message across to readers.

  16. I find the timing of this event troubling. Darrin Bell is a great political cartoonist who pulls no punches. Political cartoonists have been dropped from papers, or have left, due to owners’ changed emphases. It is a bad time for them.
    AI can be generated by anyone and internet platforms are not secure.
    I am withholding judgment until more facts are known. Whatever happens, Bell is no longer a factor in political cartooning. CANDORVILLE continues on Comics Kingdom because he probably works a few weeks in advance. there have been no updates on his blog for the past week.

    1. I couldn’t agree more.
      And thank you for FurBabies.

  17. Political and editorial cartoonists have almost always practiced with targets on their backs. Until we get more definitive info, I’d prefer to think of this as belonging in that area of conjecture.

  18. Chak O is correct that not all those attracted to non-adults are predators. Some are innocent in their attractions and desperately unlucky in what nature did to them. None of us can control our sexuality, and few can control its physical expression. Even those whose attraction to children is innocent and not predatory have no legal outlet for their sexual energy, not even cartoons with no real-life referents, and must suffer in silence all their lives. That is almost the definition of social cruelty.

    Generating images with today’s AI involves typing in strings of text. No images are involved except in “morphing” applications. Criminalising the private possession of images that do not and cannot map to any human individual punishes a made-up “thought crime”, which is something only the emotionally vicious or stunted do.

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