Canadian author charged with child porn over 'Hansel and Gretel' retelling

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Canada is not currently among the countries that imprison writers based on their published works. But that may be about to change. Last April, Quebec author Yvan Godbout and his publisher Nycolas Doucet were charged with producing and distributing child pornography. The charges against them stem from a single paragraph in one of Godbout's novels, a dark retelling of Hansel and Gretel, in which a father sexually assaults his daughter. Godbout and Doucet were arrested in March 2019, after a reader came upon the passage and called the authorities. The work was not marketed to children, contains no explicit visual images, a content warning was printed on the back, and the scene is meant to be horrifying, not erotic. [...]

The authorities in Quebec have not explained what they hope to accomplish by taking the case forward. When asked whether a fictional work such as Godbout's is a danger to the public, [Catherine] Tosenberger [a professor at the University of Winnipeg who specializes in folklore and children's literature,] says: "If that were true, Agatha Christie would be guilty of mass murder."

source: Article 'Canadian Author Charged with Child Porn Over 'Hansel and Gretel' Retelling - The case could set an alarming precedent for artists, according to freedom of speech experts' by Neil McArthur; www.vice.com/en_in/article/3a8nv3/canadian-author-charged-with-child-porn-over-hansel-and-gretel-retelling; VICE; 3 January 2020