Dwight Whorley

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Dwight Whorley in a February 3, 2004 photo from the Virginia Sex Offender Registry

Dwight E. Whorley (born circa 1952) is the first person to be charged under the PROTECT Act of 2003 for ownership of lolicon (drawn, simulated) pornography.^[1]

In 1996, the United States Congress passed an act entitled the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, which expanded the definition of child pornography to include images where no children were ever involved. This is a break from previous child pornography laws in that there is no way to claim that this law is to protect children from abuse by making illegal photos of that abuse; rather this prohibits purely computer-produced or hand-illustrated images of sexual conduct with children. In 2002, the Supreme Court found that this law was unconstitutional due to its infringements on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In 2003, Congress passed a law including a slightly revised form of the virtual child pornography prohibition. This law has not been deemed unconstitutional. The definition in this law is:

"[C]hild pornography" means any visual depiction, including any photograph, film, video, picture, or computer-generated image or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, or other means, of sexually explicit conduct, where…such visual depiction is a digital image, computer image, or computer-generated image that is, or is indistinguishable from, that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct[.]

Whorley was caught downloading the images from a computer at the Virginia Employment Commission while on parole for previous sex offense convictions.

Whorley was convicted for receiving both "…twenty obscene Japanese anime cartoons that graphically depicted prepubesecent female children being forced to engage in genital-genital and oral-genital intercourse with adult males." and "…fourteen digital photographs of actual children engaging in sexually explicit conduct." and "…sending and receiving twenty obscene E-mails which graphically described, among other things, parents sexually molesting their own children." ^[2]^[3]

A jury convicted him on 74 counts of child pornography charges. He was sentenced on March 10, 2006 to 20 years in prison and a fine of $7,400.^[4]