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Hand-drawn child porn just as bad as the real thing, appeals court says

The Court of Appeals upheld the conviction of a man who drew sexually-explicit images of children while locked in a Muskegon County prison for a previous child porn case.
Credit: Mich. Dept. of Corrections
Appeals Court upholds Christopher Czarnik's child porn conviction for drawing sexually-explicit images of fictional children

MUSKEGON, Mich. - Hand-drawn images of a fictional child engaged in sex is just as bad as the real thing, the Court of Appeals ruled in a case involving a sex offender’s prison handiwork.

Christopher John Czarnik was convicted and sentenced for producing child sexually abusive material based on drawings found in his prison cell in Muskegon County more than two years ago.

He argued the drawings were the product of his imagination and did not warrant prosecution. The Michigan Court of Appeals disagreed.

“A picture which shows a child, or appears to show a child, engaging in a sexual act is child sexually abusive material,’’ the three-judge panel wrote.

Czarnik is serving a 7 to 25-year sentence at Oaks Correctional Facility in Manistee. He is not eligible for release until 2026.

The Muskegon County Prosecutor’s Office applauded the appeals court decision, which was released earlier this week.

“The defendant is a convicted sexual predator who continues to show deviant and obscene interests in sexually assaulting children,’’ Chief Assistant Prosecutor Timothy M. Maat said in a statement. “The longer the defendant is away from kids, the better.’’

Events leading to Czarnik’s conviction occurred at the West Shoreline Correctional Facility in Muskegon Heights, where he was locked up for a previous child porn conviction.

During a March 2016 ‘pat-down’ search, a corrections officer found a drawing of a young girl “having sex and performing oral sex on an adult male,’’ court records show. Also found was a hand-written story of a six-year-old child having sex with adults.

Czarnik, 45, admitted to producing the drawings of a fictional child named ‘Becky,’ which he said he used for his own sexual gratification.

Czarnik said he “draws or writes about child sexually abusive material when he is in a ‘deviant cycle’ as a way to ‘keep thoughts of molesting children going,’’’ court records show.

He tried to get the case dismissed, arguing that the illustrations in question were “cartoon drawings of fictional characters’’ and did not qualify for prosecution under Michigan law.

In denying his appeal, justices said the seized content “easily qualify as child sexually abusive material.’’

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