"In 1991, a year after Pee-wee's Playhouse was cancelled, Reubens was arrested in an adult movie theater, where police said he was "indecently exposed" and presumably masturbating. He pleaded no contest, and was fined $135. The media vilified him as a pervert, and reruns of Pee-wee's Playhouse were abruptly jerked off the air.
In 2001, Reubens' house was raided by police, who confiscated 30,000 items from his collection of vintage erotica. The DA waited 364 days (one day before the statute of limitations would have run out) and then alleged that some of it was "child pornography" -- decades-old physique poses, old art photos, and yellowed nudist magazines. Some of the nude photos were of minors -- when the pictures were taken, but most of the models would have been dead of old age before Reubens was born. All of the photos, Reubens maintained, were legal when they were first published. Again, though, he settled. The charges were reduced to "obscenity", and Reubens pleaded guilty and paid a $100 fine in exchange for probation."
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