Award-winning Australian author Craig Silvey has appeared in court after being charged with the possession and distribution of child exploitation material.
The 'Jasper Jones' novelist was arrested on Monday after a police raid at his home in Perth.
Police say that Silvey, 43, who is a father of three children, was caught red-handed as he was found “actively engaging” with child exploitation offenders online when they arrived.
A WA Police spokeswoman said that Silvey was “immediately arrested, and his electronic devices were seized.”
He appeared in the Fremantle Magistrate's court on Tuesday, where state prosecutors alleged that Silvey was engaging in online conversations where he expressed a sexual interest in children and distributed child exploitation material over several days in January.
He also allegedly refused to provide passwords to police to gain access to his mobile, laptop, and other devices.
The court described the charges as 'very serious'.
Silvey was granted bail with $100,000 surety and must report to his local police station three times a week.
He has been banned from child-related work, including school visits, and is not allowed to be around children unsupervised, including his own. He has also been banned from accessing the internet.
Silvey is best known for his work, Jasper Jones, an award-winning novel written in 2009, which was also adapted into a popular movie.
He has also won accolades for his works Rhubarb, Honeybee, and Runt, a children's novel which was also turned into a film. He was named twice as one of the Sydney Morning Herald's best young Australian novelist.
Most of his books, popular with children and young adults, have teenage protagonists dealing with racism, sexual identity, and abuse. Australian schools have widely adopted some of his works as part of the curriculum.