Palmetto State News

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has announced the arrest of David Eugene Wilder, 48, of Locust, N.C., on ten charges related to the attempted sexual exploitation of minors. The Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force investigators from the Mount Pleasant Police Department and Charleston Police Department carried out the arrests on two sets of charges. The U.S. Marshals Service and Homeland Security Investigations, both also members of the state's ICAC Task Force, provided assistance with the investigations.

Investigators allege that Wilder solicited individuals he believed to be minors for sex and encouraged them to produce child sexual abuse material. They further claim that Wilder sent sexually explicit images to a person he believed to be a minor.

Wilder was arrested on May 14, 2024. He faces seven counts of criminal solicitation of a minor (§16-15-342), a felony offense punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment on each count; two counts of attempted sexual exploitation of a minor, first degree (§16-15-395), a felony offense punishable by up to 20 years imprisonment on each count; and one count of attempted dissemination of obscene material to a person under age eighteen (§16-15-345), a felony offense punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment.

The Attorney General's Office will prosecute this case. Attorney General Wilson emphasized that all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until they are proven guilty in a court of law.

*Child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, is considered a more accurate term for the material involved in these heinous crimes than "pornography," which can imply that the child was a consenting participant. Globally, the term child pornography is being replaced by CSAM for this reason.