Georgia Man Arrested on Child Sexual Abuse Material* and Related Charges in Joint Investigation

(COLUMBIA, S.C.) - South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson announced the arrest of Drennen Jackson Rye, 45, of  Savannah, GA, on four charges connected to the sexual exploitation of minors.  Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force investigators with the Beaufort Police Department made the arrest. Investigators with the US Marshal's Service, also members of the state's ICAC Task Force, assisted with the investigation. Investigators with the Savannah Police Department also assisted in this multistate cooperative investigation.

Investigators state Rye solicited a person he believed to be a minor for sex and sent sexually explicit images to a person he believed to be a minor.

Rye was arrested on May 27, 2022 by authorities in Georgia and extradited to Beaufort County on June 7, 2022. He is charged with two counts of criminal solicitation of a minor (§16-3-342), a felony offense punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment on each count; and two counts of disseminating obscene material to a person under age eighteen (§16-15-345), a felony offense punishable by up to ten years imprisonment on each count.

The case will be prosecuted by the Attorney General's Office.

Attorney General Wilson stressed all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until they are proven guilty in a court of law.

* Child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, is a more accurate reflection of the material involved in these heinous and abusive crimes. "Pornography" can imply the child was a consenting participant.  Globally, the term child pornography is being replaced by CSAM for this reason.