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Who is Darrin Bell? Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post cartoonist arrested for child pornography

BySumanti Sen
Jan 16, 2025 07:49 PM IST

The investigation that led to Darrin Bell's arrest started after an individual uploaded 18 files containing child sexual abuse material to an online service.

Darrin Bell, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist whose work is seen in the Washington Post and other newspapers across the United States, has reportedly been arrested for possessing child pornography, law enforcement in California has confirmed. According to Sgt. Amar Gandhi, of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, the investigation started after an individual uploaded as many as 18 files containing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to an online service. After further probe, it was revealed a that total of 134 videos containing CSAM had been recovered.

Who is Darrin Bell? Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post cartoonist arrested for child pornography (Darrin Bell/LinkedIn)
Who is Darrin Bell? Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post cartoonist arrested for child pornography (Darrin Bell/LinkedIn)

On Wednesday, January 15, a search warrant was executed at Bell’s home after authorities learned that he owned and controlled the account in question. Bell was subsequently taken into custody and booked into the Sacramento County Main Jail for CSAM possession, BNO News reported.

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

Bell is being held on $1 million bail. The 49-year-old is set to appear in court on Friday, January 17.

Who is Darrin Bell?

Bell is the recipient of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, the 2016 Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning, the 2015 RFK Award for Editorial Cartooning, and UC Berkeley’s 2015 Daily Californian Alumni of the Year Award. He started his career in 1995, when he was 20 years old.

According to the website of Macmillan Publishers, “While serving as the Daily Californian’s staff cartoonist, he began freelancing for the Opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Oakland Tribune. In 1997, he cocreated the comic strip Rudy Park and self-syndicated it to technology magazines. United Media launched it into newspapers in 2001. In 2003, Darrin launched his other comic strip, Candorville, in newspapers via the Washington Post Writers Group (WPWG), which also began syndicating his editorial cartoons in 2013.”

It adds, “While WPWG still syndicates Candorville and Rudy Park, Darrin moved his editorial cartoons to King Features Syndicate in late 2018. He’s also a contributing cartoonist for the New Yorker.”

After winning the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, Bell, who lives with his wife and four children in California, told ABC News, “I want [readers] to take away that we need to be more respectful of human dignity. That’s the common thread I try to weave through every cartoon that I draw — whether it’s about police brutality or immigrants being separated from their children, or whether it’s about Donald Trump. It’s a big moment of validation.”

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