Federal judge legalizes AI generated child sex abuse material in USA

 

Federal judge rules that AI-generated child sex abuse material is protected under the First Amendment

By Emily Van de Riet

Published: Sep. 1, 2026 at 2:07 PM PDT

(Gray News) — A federal judge in Wisconsin has ruled that AI-generated child sexual abuse material is protected by the First Amendment, but he voiced concerns about these kinds of cases.

The decision comes in a case against a Wisconsin man who was arrested in 2024 for producing, distributing and possessing AI-generated child sexual abuse material.

According to the Department of Justice, 42-year-old Steven Anderegg used a text-to-image generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) model called Stable Diffusion to create thousands of realistic images of young children.

Many of the images depicted naked children engaging in sexual intercourse with men, the DOJ said. The DOJ said thousands of images were found on Anderegg’s computer.

Anderegg was also accused of sending some of the images to a 15-year-old boy and telling the boy how he created the images using AI.

At the time of Anderegg’s arrest, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri said the DOJ was prepared to hold him accountable.

“Today’s announcement sends a clear message: using AI to produce sexually explicit depictions of children is illegal, and the Justice Department will not hesitate to hold accountable those who possess, produce, or distribute AI-generated child sexual abuse material,” Argentieri said in May.

But last week, Judge John Z. Lee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss the charges.

In his Aug. 25 decision, the judge referred to two U.S. Supreme Court decisions from 1969 and 2002. The first ruled that people have a right to keep obscenity in the privacy of their homes, and the second ruled that child sex abuse material that does not depict real children is not child pornography and is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In his decision, however, the judge noted that while he is bound by the precedent set by the Supreme Court, he is concerned about “the lines these cases draw” and how quickly AI is evolving.

The judge also noted that AI-generated child sexual abuse material is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from material that shows real children.

“We now live in an age where GenAI models can render images depicting the abuse of virtual children that are virtually indistinguishable from those depicting the abuse of actual children,” Lee wrote in his decision. “This case illuminates how this evolving technology complicates the lines drawn by the Supreme Court … that was nearly twenty-five years ago, and the image-generation technology available today was likely unimaginable back then. Given the relentless advancement in artificial intelligence models, we have some concerns about the lines these cases draw, but we are not free to redraw them ourselves.”

How can you tell whether a portion of a child, or a whole child, has been morphed into pornography?

Laws need to be rewritten on the side of caution in protecting children and discouraging pedophilia. Pedophilia should be a crime whether the child victims are real or fictitious. Sin is progressive!

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CSA in the USA > MS man gets 10 years for CSAM; Tucson airmen ready to pay to rape a child; Mall Manager charged with 137 counts of CSAM; WSU student arrested for CSAM

 

MS man gets 10 years for moving child sex abuse files to the cloud

by: Vivian Nguyen

Posted: Aug 27, 2026 / 03:39 PM CDT

Updated: Aug 27, 2026 / 03:39 PM CDT

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Corinth, Mississippi, man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for moving child sexual abuse files from the dark web to cloud storage, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Mississippi.

Zachary “Zach” Alan Little, 36, was sentenced after being found with almost 4,000 child sexual abuse files, the attorney’s office said.

Many of the sexually explicit images and videos involved children between seven and 10 years old, prosecutors said.

Little was also sentenced to five years of supervised release and will have to register as a sex offender.

The FBI and the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office were involved in the investigation of the case.

Former airman accused of offering to pay to rape child reaches plea deal

Karl Alexander Streets admits to child possessing child sexual abuse material

By Michael Cooper, Kayla Butter and 13 News Staff

Published: Apr. 21, 2026 at 10:34 AM PDT|Updated: Aug. 28, 2026 at 3:19 PM PDT

TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) - The former Davis-Monthan airman accused of offering to pay to rape a young child and who was caught with child sexual abuse material has reached a plea deal.

Karl Alexander Streets was in court on Friday, Aug. 28, and pleaded to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and solicitation of sexual conduct. He had been indicted on 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.

The 37-year-old Streets will be held without bond until sentencing, which has been scheduled for 9 a.m. Oct. 15.

Streets was arrested on April 20, 2026, following a year-long investigation.

Former SouthPark Mall manager charged with 137 counts of possession of child sex abuse materials

WSU student arrested on Pullman campus for child sexual abuse material

PULLMAN, Wash. – An 18-year-old Washington State University (WSU) student was arrested on Friday for possession of child sexual abuse material during an ongoing investigation, according to the Pullman Police Department (PPD).

PPD officers and detectives executed search warrants at a dorm room in Olympia Hall on the WSU campus, where they detained the 18-year-old student.

According to the department, he was booked into the Whitman County Jail on a felony charge of possession of depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

The investigation commenced following a cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

“There are no additional suspects outstanding, and there is no known risk to the public related to this investigation,” PPD officials stated.

Wolves Among the Sheep > Disgraced Montreal priest facing new charges of CSAM, CSAEM; Catholic victims victimized again in financial settlements

 

Former Montreal priest imprisoned for sexually abusing boys facing new charges

Brian Boucher has been serving rest of 8-year sentence in the community after statutory release in 2024

CBC News · Posted: Aug 28, 2026 7:15 AM PDT | Last Updated: August 28

Following these new charges, Brian Boucher's next court appearance on Sept. 1. (CBC)

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A former Montreal priest who was imprisoned for sexually abusing two boys, and serving the remainder of his sentence in the community under supervision, is facing new charges.

According to his charge sheet, Brian Boucher is accused of being in possession of child sexual abuse and exploitation material between April 7 and 9.

His next court appearance is on Sept. 1.

Boucher is serving an eight-year sentence after being found guilty in 2019 of sexually abusing two boys while he was a priest in LaSalle and, later, in the Town of Mount Royal. Boucher was granted statutory release on July 23, 2024.

• Priest who sexually abused 2 boys banned from parts of Montreal after encountering victim

While in prison in 2023, Boucher was also charged with sexual assault, voyeurism and criminal harassment regarding alleged incidents inside prison. He was acquitted of those charges in 2025.

Boucher was defrocked in 2020.

‘This whole thing’s a farce’: New Orleans Catholic church sex abuse settlement brings anger and shock

Survivors begin receiving letters with payment amounts months after $305m settlement agreement was struck

Ramon Antonio Vargas and David Hammer of WWL Louisiana in New Orleans

Fri 28 Aug 2026 11.00 cst

Survivors of child rape and other sexual abuse within New Orleans’s Roman Catholic archdiocese learned that $641,000 or so is the most they can individually get under a settlement approved in December to resolve a years-long bankruptcy protection case.

Those amounts were communicated in letters that hundreds of clergy abuse survivors participating in the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy began receiving on Tuesday. The figures are well below a $2.4m jury verdict awarded to an unrelated Louisiana religious sexual abuse claimant in June 2025 after the state’s legislature temporarily eliminated filing deadlines for such cases.

The amounts cited in the recent letters were also substantially below out-of-court settlements that a handful of clergy abuse survivors in the New Orleans area have reached in the verdict’s aftermath with Catholic institutions not affected by the bankruptcy, which evidently have been more or less comparable to the jury award.

Survivors say the amounts in the letters aren’t just insulting – but also the latest evidence of the disproportionate advantage enjoyed by the more than 40 Catholic institutions that have gone to federal court to declare bankruptcy amid the financial fallout of the church’s worldwide clergy molestation scandal, including nearly 30 such groups that have settled.

“This whole thing’s a farce,” Aaron Hebert, who was abused by Lawrence Hecker, a late, convicted child rapist and longtime archdiocesan priest, said on Thursday. Richard Coon, who has testified to being molested by three men with links to the archdiocese, added: “There’s a lot of survivors that are hurting right now.”

Driving the despair that Coon and Hebert described are two elements: the $305m settlement that the archdiocese as well as its insurers on 8 December agreed to pay to clergy abuse survivors to resolve a bankruptcy protection case opened in 2020; and a zero- to 100-point system determining each individual victim’s payment.

Settlement disclosure documents that disgusted victims virtually from the outset detail how points would be assigned based on the nature of the abuse, among other elements. Rape, for instance, equated to 75 points within the system; oral or digital abuse was 56 units; and grooming behavior was five.

Additionally, the archdiocese and others made comments in open court promising payments by the end of spring 2026. The process instead dragged, with settlement trustee Don Massey filing motions in court to get the church to turn over records needed to make payment determinations.

“Any promises made by the debtor (the archdiocese and its affiliates) were not made by the settlement trust,” Massey said when asked about payments not yet having been doled out. “The settlement trust was not consulted by the debtor prior to making this uninformed promise.”

By Thursday, days after the abuse claims valuations concluded, the Guardian and reporting partner WWL Louisiana had confirmed the maximum 100-point payout equated to an “estimated distribution” from the settlement of $641,425.64. That meant each allocated point was worth $6,414.26.

Hebert shared his letter with the outlets. He had been awarded 56 points – or an estimated settlement distribution of $359,198.

Meanwhile, having endured rape and oral sexual abuse by multiple clergy predators, Coon was allocated 98 points. He said it was “shocking” that he did not get maximum points given the circumstances surrounding his claim.

Coon, Hebert and bankruptcy claimant Brian Manix all expressed disbelief that allocation letters given to survivors failed to break down precisely how the claims evaluator, the personal injury attorney Richard Arsenault, arrived at their points total. The missives just contained the final sum, the estimated settlement distribution and an acknowledgment that the bankruptcy may have required them “to revisit deeply personal and difficult experience”.

Survivors have 30 days to ask for reconsideration, but without the basis for the points total, they are left to guess why they didn’t receive what they expected.

“We asked … for that,” Manix said on Thursday. While he declined to publicly disclose his allocation, he confirmed he was not awarded maximum points, saying, “I was raped. I was made to give oral sex, and I was groomed … I need somebody to tell me … what’s missing.”

After pursuing a case leading to a child rape conviction and sentence of life imprisonment for Hecker, Neil Duhon said he was allocated just 75 points – $481,069.50. He said he got no additional points for his role in Hecker’s successful prosecution, which the system called for.

“Now we know how much it cost a priest to rape a … boy,” said Duhon, who was 15 when abused.

Arsenault did not respond to a request for comment.

Sources familiar with the process say more than 800 abuse claims were given points allocations. Among them were more than 100 that got scores of zero – such as for claiming abuse by a predator or entity not affiliated with the archdiocese.

Furthermore, the sources said that about $56m from the settlement was being temporarily held back to account for successful appeals. And any remaining money held back would then be redistributed to survivors based off their points allocations.

Still, that provided little comfort to Coon, Hebert, Manix and other survivors with whom they said they spoke in recent days. Perhaps most frustratingly for them, survivors who challenge their allocations must pay $1,000 out of pocket, according to a protocol established in December and which the vast majority of claimants approved.

Attorney Richard Trahant, who is part of a legal team representing Coon, Hebert, Manix, Duhon and roughly 80 other abuse claimants in the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy, said a number of his clients would appeal their allocations.

“The $1,000 fee for reconsideration of the point total is obnoxious,” Trahant also said. “And we will figure out how to address that in the coming days.”

Coon, Hebert and Manix said such factors convinced them that bankruptcy court was the wrong venue to be fairly compensated for their abuse – despite assertions by the archdiocese that it was the venue providing the most equitable solution.

As Coon put it: “The bankruptcy was all about protecting the church.”

CSA in the EU > AI-generated child sex abuse material made illegal in Europe

 

Creating, altering and distributing AI-generated child sexual abuse material is criminalised under Council of Europe conventions

Countries urged to review reservations that limit prosecution for AI-generated abuse material

Monegasque Secretary of State for Justice Samuel Vuelta Simon (left) exchanges with the Council of Europe’s Matthias Kloth before the joint meeting

The Council of Europe’s Cybercrime Convention committee and the Committee of the parties to the Convention on the protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse have issued a joint statement following a session held on 2 June 2026 in Strasbourg addressing the growing threats posed by AI-generated and altered child-sexual-exploitation and sexual-abuse material.

The joint statement underlines that the criminalisation provisions of the Convention on cybercrime and the Convention on the protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse (Lanzarote Convention) are technology-neutral and apply irrespective of the technologies used to create, alter or distribute such material, including through the use of artificial intelligence.

Addressing the growing threats of AI-generated child abuse material

During the joint session, committee members discussed the rapidly evolving use of artificial intelligence technologies to create, alter and disseminate such material, including fully AI-generated images and altered images depicting real children. Participants highlighted concerns that these technologies facilitate offending on a greater scale, complicate investigations and evidentiary assessments, and intensify harm to victims through grooming, extortion, “normalisation” of sexual abuse and the continued circulation and manipulation of abusive material.

It is important to ensure that existing legal frameworks remain effective in addressing offences involving AI-generated or altered material, the participants stressed. The committees encouraged state parties to both conventions to review reservations that may limit the criminalisation or prosecution of AI-generated or altered child sexual-exploitation or sexual-abuse material in light of the rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies.

Supporting effective investigations, victim protection and international cooperation

The joint statement reiterates that the procedural powers and international cooperation measures available under the Convention on Cybercrime and its second additional protocol, together with the preventive, protective and child-friendly justice measures of the Lanzarote Convention, can be used to counter offences involving AI-generated or altered child-sexual-exploitation or sexual-abuse material.

The committees encouraged states parties to the conventions to strengthen efforts to prevent, detect, investigate and prosecute offences involving such material, including through enhanced international cooperation, the rapid removal of such material, specialised training for relevant professionals, and closer engagement with service providers and technology companies.

Continued cooperation among criminal-justice authorities, child-protection actors, international organisations, civil society and private-sector stakeholders is vital for addressing emerging technological developments related to online sexual offences against children.

Workshops on child sexual violence

The joint session identified possible follow-up activities, including a workshop during the Octopus conference in October 2026 focusing on the impact of AI-generated child sexual exploitation and sexual abuse material on victims, as well as the inclusion of computer-generated child sexual exploitation or sexual abuse material as a thematic workstream during the joint Council of Europe and WeProtect Global Alliance conference in June 2027.

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 Read the joint statement in full

 Discover more about the Council of Europe’s work for children

 Read the programme of the joint session in full

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