How have courts treated prosecutions for written or drawn depictions of minors in sexual contexts (fictional works) in different jurisdictions?

1. Federal law in the United States: visual depictions, obscenity and the PROTECT Act

At the federal level the PROTECT Act (codified in 18 U.S.C. § 1466A) criminalizes obscene visual representations of sexual abuse of children and also criminalizes visual depictions that “appear to be” of minors engaging in explicit conduct, including drawings, cartoons and paintings; the statute explicitly does not require that the minor actually exist ^{[1] [2]}. Federal prosecutions therefore have focused on visual media — photographs, CGI and drawings — and the government relies on the “obscene” standard or on depictions that appear to be minors; virtual images that are virtually indistinguishable from real children are specifically vulnerable to prosecution ^{[2] [4]}. Jurisdictional elements such as interstate commerce or use of computers can trigger federal power, and courts have required proof of knowledge or intent in some production contexts ^{[1] [5]}.

2. State statutes and prosecutorial practice: Washington as an example of broad coverage

Some states have explicit statutes that treat fabricated or fictional depictions as illegal and define the unit of prosecution for each printed or visual depiction, as Washington’s RCW shows: the statute and implementing commentary treat each depiction — visual or printed — as a separate offense and require prosecutors to account for discovery issues unique to image cases, and the legislature intended to cover electronic depictions and even fabricated images ^{[6] [7] [8]}. State practice therefore can be broader than federal law in how it counts and pursues “depictions,” and jury instructions and defenses often hinge on whether the defendant knew the subject was a minor ^[9].

3. Judicial lines: obscenity, “appears to be,” and the knowledge element

Courts have enforced key thresholds: whether a depiction is obscene under community-standards tests and whether an image appears to be of a minor; some appellate rulings have treated superimposed faces or photorealistic CGI as unprotected speech when they are effectively indistinguishable from real children ^{[2] [3]}. Conversely, where actual production or distribution of images of real minors is not implicated, defendants have argued First Amendment protections, and judges have required the government to prove knowledge of the age or intent to distribute in specific contexts ^{[5] [10]}.

4. International divergence: France, South Korea and beyond

Outside the United States, criminal law can be more categorical: France’s reforms treat drawings representing minors under 15 in sexual contexts as equivalent to real child pornography and punish production or distribution, a standard applied in high-profile prosecutions of cartoonists ^[11]. South Korea’s Supreme Court has ruled that sexually explicit anime and manga depicting minors constitute child pornography, overturning earlier more permissive lower-court rulings ^[11]. These examples illustrate that many jurisdictions prefer bright-line rules for visual fiction rather than the nuanced U.S. obscenity/appearance analysis ^[11].

5. The remaining gaps: purely written fiction and evolving enforcement risks

The sources surveyed focus overwhelmingly on visual depictions; federal statutes and most case law target images, and the extent to which purely textual erotic fiction depicting minors could be prosecuted remains unsettled in the cited material — commentators warn that an aggressive prosecutor might try to push obscenity or state statutes into that space, but the documentary record here does not provide definitive case law authorizing routine prosecutions for purely written fictional content ^{[12] [13] [10]}. Legal scholars note the ongoing First Amendment tensions and jurisdictional complexity, meaning outcomes vary by forum, statute wording, and prosecutorial discretion ^{[2] [10]}.