MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — A couple has been arrested in South Carolina and charged with multiple sex crimes, including obscenity, after police were tipped off about public sex videos they had allegedly shot and uploaded to an adult website.
The videos were allegedly shot in Myrtle Beach and the Horry County prosecutor is charging the couple with indecent exposure and also with “participation in preparation of obscene material,” part of South Carolina’s rarely enforced obscenity statute which considers all filming of sexual acts illegal.
The accused couple — a male and a female, both 36 years old — has been identified by their legal names by mainstream publications, some of which also provided identifying location information for them.
The couple was arrested on January 16 and charged on January 21. The male was charged with one charge of indecent exposure and two charges of participation in preparation of obscene material. The female was charged with two charges of indecent exposure, two charges of participation in preparation of obscene material, and one additional charge of “malicious injury to personal property for a value of $2,000 or less.” The couple posted bail.
The alleged indecent exposure was not witnessed or reported by anyone at the time of the incident and the investigation by local police seems to have only consisted of reviewing the videos allegedly posted by the couple to the adult site.
Today, the couple was arrested again, for other videos presented by the police, according to the local ABC News affiliate.
Surfside Beach police now alleges the couple also “performed and recorded sex acts in a Food Lion parking lot, and on a bench near Floral Lake Playground.” The authorities also stated the female “is also being investigated by SBPD for two other allegedly filmed instances of indecent exposure where she exposed herself and urinated at a local baseball field, and at Floral Lake Playground.”
The original January 16 arrest, according to ABC News, occurred “after officers were tipped-off to videos showing the couple performing sex acts inside a glass gondola at the Myrtle Beach SkyWheel within view of the public, and at a community pool in the Surfside Beach area of Horry County sometime during the December 2020.”
“The warrants said the defendants recorded the acts and uploaded the video to an adult website,” the news site added.
South Carolina’s ‘Preparation of Obscene Material’ Statute
The rarely enforced South Carolina “Participation in preparation of obscene material prohibited” (SC Code § 16-15-325, 2012) statute states that:
Any individual who knowingly:
(a) photographs himself or any other individual or animal for purposes of preparing an obscene film, photograph, negative, slide, videotapes, motion picture or digital electronic files for the purpose of dissemination; or
(b) models, poses, acts or otherwise assists in the preparation of any obscene film, photograph, negative, slide, videotapes, motion picture or digital electronic files for the purpose of dissemination is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, must be imprisoned for not more than one year and fined not more than one thousand dollars.
Parallels With Mayven Doll Case
The charges against the South Carolina couple mirror the beginning of the three-year-long ordeal which turned the lives of Arkansas clip artist couple Mayven Doll and BDSMneam and their family upside down.
As XBIZ reported last year, the couple was charged in 2017 with nine felonies each after police received an anonymous tip about a specific clip they had shot in public places around Jonesboro.
Acting on the anonymous tip, the police had downloaded, reviewed and written descriptions of the clips into a request for an arrest warrant and then raided their home in full force, led by an officer known in the area for “high-risk” SWAT work against “violent criminals.”
The Jonesboro, Ark. policeman who filed the affidavit to secure the warrant against Mayven Doll and her husband/co-producer specifically worded his description of the clip to invoke three old Arkansas obscenity statutes about “hard-core film,” that are still in the state’s books.
The statutes are rarely applied to recorded sexual expression and are so overly broad that they penalize even owning a single commercial porn DVD.
A Patchwork of Antiquated Laws
Industry veterans and trade organizations often emphasize that amateur and professional producers of adult content need to familiarize themselves with local laws before publicly releasing videos.
The only two states in the United States that have explicitly protected the production of pornography as free speech are California and New Hampshire. All other states and territories are at the mercy of a patchwork of typically antiquated, sometimes contradictory statutes that are applied at the sole discretion of local law enforcement and often politically motivated district attorneys and judges.
