Who is the bigger perv. [Archive]

The Ensanity

01-10-2003, 06:47 PM

Child **** riddle grips Hollywood
By Steve Gorman

Click to enlarge photo

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Fresh from the bruises of the Winona Ryder shoplifting trial, Hollywood is grappling with a new celebrity scandal: Is popular comic actor Paul Reubens a consumer of child ****ography or an erotic art enthusiast being unfairly prosecuted?

These contradictory views lie at the heart of a legal quandary engulfing Reubens, who is best known for entertaining young TV viewers as the nerdy man-child Pee-wee Herman.

The sides are as sharply drawn as in the divisive Ryder case, which ended with the actress being found guilty of shoplifting after maintaining for more than a year that she was innocent and had been singled out because of her celebrity.

Reubens, 50, whose career was nearly derailed in 1991 by a lewd conduct scandal, was charged last November by the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office with a misdemeanor count of possessing child ****ography a year after police searched his home and carted off boxes of material in connection with a wider ****ography probe in which he was not charged.

The actor has pleaded innocent and has drawn support from some high-profile friends -- including a star from the popular TV show "Friends" -- and from a prominent TV celebrity program that maintains prosecutors, rather than Reubens, have a lot to answer for.

"Friends" co-star Courteney Cox and her actor husband David Arquette recently told the syndicated show "Extra," they had seen Reubens' erotica collection and deemed it both "harmless" and "kitschy."

EASY TO CONFUSE?

"It's very easy to confuse art with something else," Cox said. Arquette added, "Paul has never been interested in anything improper involving children, or sexually. He doesn't deserve this."

Reubens' lawyer, Blair Berk, has said the items confiscated from his home were part of a perfectly legal archive of adult books and magazines, some dating back 50 or 100 years, and that Reubens was unaware that they included anything improper.

The TV show "Celebrity Justice" maintains that a key piece of evidence that prosecutors are planning to use is a copy of the infamous videotape of "West Wing" co-star Rob Lowe cavorting with an underage girl in 1988 -- an item widely available on Internet video **** sites.

"Celebrity Justice" executive producer Harvey Levin, in interviews with other TV shows this week and last, said prosecutors' handling of the case has raised "some serious red flags," especially since no images of child ****ography were found by police in their analysis of the computer equipment seized from Reubens' home.

"You know how high-profile cases work with prosecutors .... this is a troubling case," he said in one interview.

But Matt Littman, the spokesman for the City Attorney's Office, which is bringing the charge against Reubens, insists it is legitimate. He said the prosecutors' case does not rest on the Rob Lowe footage but on sexually explicit images of juveniles found in two other videos and in dozens of photographs found at Reubens' house.

LEWD NATURE 'UNMISTAKABLE'

Littman said the lewd nature of the photos was unmistakable and that the age of the images was not an issue. "The photographs are of children depicted in a sexual manner," Littman said. "If you see the pictures, I'm sure that you will understand why these charges were filed."

Reubens himself has kept a low profile but his spokeswoman Kelly Bush has accused prosecutors of publicly distorting the nature of their case against the entertainer.

"The very first piece of evidence identified as child ****ography in this case was the Rob Lowe tape videotape," she told Reuters. "Any other material they are prosecuting is 30 to 100 years old."

One source close to the defence acknowledged that while juveniles may appear in an isolated number of photos, none was so sexually explicit as to violate child ****ography statutes.

"Is a 15-year-old posed as a Greek statue taken in 1901, partially naked, does that constitute child ****ography?" the source asked. "And even if you got that far, is there any proof that (Reubens) ever knowingly possessed that particular image?"

Bush has said the investigation of Reubens was sparked by allegations made by a teenager against him and another actor, Jeffrey Jones. No charges in that probe were brought against Reubens but Jones on Thursday pleaded innocent to charges of taking sexually explicit photographs of the teenager, a 14-year-old boy.