Robyn Byrd and Katie Rice were teenage Ren & Stimpy fans who wanted to make cartoons. They say they were preyed upon by the creator of the show, John Kricfalusi, who admitted to having had a 16-year-old girlfriend when approached by BuzzFeed News.

Robyn Byrd thought her plan was working when the letter from her hero arrived in the mail. It was 1994, and the 13-year-old had sent the creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show a video of herself talking about her drawings and the animation career she envisioned; she thought if she got the attention of the studio behind the hit Nickelodeon show, she might get a job there someday. John Kricfalusi’s effusive letter, Byrd said, seemed like the first step toward her dream. She could hardly believe he’d responded. “I had built up these characters and this mythos of Ren & Stimpy in my head,” Byrd, now 37, told BuzzFeed News. “It was exciting.” Soon, she said, she began receiving boxes of toys and art supplies from 39-year-old Kricfalusi, better known as John K. He helped her get her first AOL account, through which he convinced her he could help her become a great artist. He visited her at the trailer park where she lived in Tucson, Arizona. “I thought I was still his little cute friend,” she said. And then, when she was still in 11th grade, he flew her to Los Angeles to show her his studio and talk about her future. She said that on the same trip, in a room with a sliding glass door that led to his pool, he touched her genitals through her pajamas as she lay frozen on a blanket he’d placed on the floor. She was 16. In the summer of 1997, before her senior year of high school, he flew her to Los Angeles again, where Byrd had an internship at Spumco, Kricfalusi’s studio, and lived with him as his 16-year-old girlfriend and intern. After finishing her senior year in Tucson, the tiny, dark-haired girl moved in with Kricfalusi permanently at age 17. She told herself that Kricfalusi was helping to launch her career; in the end, she fled animation to get away from him. Since October, a national reckoning with sexual assault and harassment has not only felled dozens of prominent men, but also caused allegations made in the past to resurface. In some ways, the old transgressions are the most uncomfortable: They implicate not just the alleged abusers, but everyone who knew about the stories and chose to overlook them.

Albert L. Ortega / WireImage John Kricfalusi

Although sexual abuse allegations against Kricfalusi have never been made public before, his relationship with Byrd has been an open secret within animation — so open that “a girl he had been dating since she was fifteen years old” was referenced briefly in a book about the history of Ren & Stimpy. Tony Mora, an art director at Warner Bros., and Gabe Swarr, a producer at Warner Bros., worked alongside Byrd at Spumco. The male artists said stories of how Kricfalusi sexually harassed female artists, including teenage girls, were known through the industry. “It’s always been there,” Mora said. Moreover, Kricfalusi made his fixation on teenage girls plainly obvious in his art, even as he worked on animated projects for the likes of Cartoon Network, Fox Kids, and Adult Swim. In an interview with Howard Stern in the mid-’90s, the radio host asked him about a character in the comic book anthology the cartoonist was then promoting. Stern called Sody Pop “a hot chick with big cans and nice legs.” Kricfalusi responded with a smile: “She’s underage, too.” And yet Kricfalusi, 62, continues to be widely celebrated as a pioneer in the male-dominated field of animation. Creators of shows including SpongeBob SquarePants, Adventure Time, and Rick and Morty have cited Ren & Stimpy as an influence. After Nickelodeon fired the perpetually behind-schedule artist from Ren & Stimpy in 1992, he became an early proponent of art and shows made just for the internet. His output has slowed down, but he enjoys a living-legend stature that prompted 3,562 people to fund a Kickstarter campaign for his short Cans Without Labels, which he screened at a prestigious animation film festival in 2016. He made art for Miley Cyrus’s 2014 Bangerz tour; he animated two credit sequences on The Simpsons, the most recent in 2015. Until the publication of this story, his portrait hung on the wall at Nickelodeon. On Kricfalusi’s behalf, an attorney responded to a detailed list of allegations in this story with the following statement: “The 1990s were a time of mental and emotional fragility for Mr. Kricfalusi, especially after losing Ren and Stimpy, his most prized creation. For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend. Over the years John struggled with what were eventually diagnosed mental illnesses in 2008. To that point, for nearly three decades he had relied primarily on alcohol to self-medicate. Since that time he has worked feverishly on his mental health issues, and has been successful in stabilizing his life over the last decade. This achievement has allowed John the opportunity to grow and mature in ways he’d never had a chance at before.”

Courtesy Rice A photo sent to Rice by Kricfalusi

While Byrd felt deeply alone when she left animation, she later realized she hadn’t been the only underage girl Kricfalusi groomed for a relationship. In 2008, long after she last saw Kricfalusi, Byrd reconnected with an old internet friend: the artist Katie Rice. Kricfalusi introduced them through AOL in the mid-’90s, when they were still children, telling them he’d hire them both at Spumco someday. Although Kricfalusi never had a physical sexual relationship with Rice, he began hitting on her when she was a minor, she said, behavior that ranged from writing her flirty letters (“I bet you’ll be up to no good. Just like me,” he wrote in 1996) to masturbating while she was on the phone. In 2000, when Rice was 18 and trying to break into animation, Kricfalusi offered her a job. Once she started working for him, Rice said, he persistently sexually harassed her.

“I know a lot of people struggle with the ‘art vs. artist’ thing.”

Old letters, emails, and transcripts of AOL conversations between the women and Kricfalusi back up many of their claims. They each have witnesses to parts of their stories. Yet both women worried that they sounded “crazy.” For years, they chose to keep their experiences private, because coming forward didn’t seem like it was worth the risk. Rice feared retribution from his many supporters. Neither woman thought they’d be taken seriously. Now they believe the world has changed. Byrd feels the time has come for Kricfalusi to be held accountable, particularly, she said, after the police told her in December that Kricfalusi’s alleged crimes against her were too old to investigate. “He shouldn’t be able to get away with that,” she said.

Courtesy Byrd and Rice Left: A drawing Kricfalusi sent Byrd; Right: A mix CD he sent Rice

And while Byrd teaches philosophy and undergraduate writing classes, Rice still works in animation and regularly encounters people asking her what it was like to work for “a legend.” It made her hesitant to criticize him, as if it would be her fault for tainting his work. But, sitting in a Burbank restaurant, she said, “I know a lot of people struggle with the ‘art vs. artist’ thing, and I get it. Like, I love Rosemary’s Baby. But would I watch another movie that he made, knowing what I know now?” she said, referring to the multiple rape allegations against filmmaker Roman Polanski. “I would say no, I don’t want to watch it. I don’t want any part of that. There’s nice people you can hire. There’s nice people who can make things, there’s nice people who make cartoons. … They’re just as fucking good.”

Jessica Pons for BuzzFeed News Katie Rice, photographed in Burbank on March 28

Rice wanted to be an artist from the time she was in the fourth grade. In the summer before fifth grade, when she started watching the original Nicktoons — Doug, Rugrats, and Ren & Stimpy — the tween decided to become a cartoonist. Her parents were skeptical. Her mother told BuzzFeed News that she worried her daughter was being unrealistic.

So when Rice wrote to Kricfalusi when she was around 14, and then they began corresponding over AOL, Rice said it was a source of validation for her and her family: A powerful man who had recently been nominated for an Emmy Award saw that she had potential. They continued chatting online and on the phone into her sophomore year of high school, and Kricfalusi’s messages made her feel special. In an AOL conversation he told her not to copy and send to her friends, he said, “I wnat [sic] to squeeze you,” and “I’m crazy about you, Katie”; he asked her, “Do I ever make you tingle?” In an email she printed and saved from a few days after she turned 15, the 41-year-old man wrote, “I’m thinking about you very hard right now. And I have a little tickle in my chest.” Now 36, Rice looks at these old pages with some of the compliments underlined in purple gel pen and cringes.

“I think this 40 year old man is hitting on me,” Rice wrote in her diary. “But he’s never perverted. He is also very nice. He gives me a lot of drawing tips.”

At the time, she didn’t see the harm. “I think this 40 year old man is hitting on me,” she wrote in a diary entry from between December 1995 and March 1996, saying her friend agreed with her. (Speaking to BuzzFeed News, the friend recalled having this conversation, and that she thought Kricfalusi was hitting on Rice.) Rice, then 14, continued in her diary, “But he’s never perverted. He is also very nice. He gives me a lot of drawing tips.” Rice and Kricfalusi met a few times in Los Angeles, and they kept talking after she moved with her parents from California to Lake Tahoe in 1996 when she was entering 10th grade at age 14. They never had physical sexual contact, but when Rice lived in Nevada, she remembers several late-night phone calls during which Kricfalusi said, “Repeat after me: John’s dick slides in my puzzy” (his pronunciation of the word) while he masturbated on the other end of the line. She refused. Rice, who was naive about sex, said she didn’t realize what he was doing at first — until, all of a sudden, she did. Christine Nockels, a high school friend of Rice who later worked at Spumco, said Rice told her about the masturbation when they were classmates. The conversations left Rice shaken, but she trusted him. Lonely in her new school in Nevada, she viewed him as her only friend. He attended her 15th birthday party, which he later confirmed on a DVD extra for the 2003 Ren & Stimpy reboot. (“I was at her 15th birthday party. We’ll tell you that backstory a little bit later,” he said with a grin.) She was devastated when he abruptly stopped talking to her in early 1997.

Courtesy Byrd Kricfalusi and a 15-year-old Byrd in 1996

That same winter, Kricfalusi flew out to visit Byrd, then a high school junior, at home in Arizona. They had sex for the first time at a nearby hotel, she said, and put into motion a series of decisions that would reshape the rest of her teenage years. She’d move in with Kricfalusi for the summer and intern at Spumco, then complete her senior year at a private school in Arizona, and he would cover the tuition. He told her he could give her an animation career in Los Angeles when she graduated. She and her mother believed him.

So when the young artist and writer moved in with Kricfalusi in the summer of 1997, part of her was happy. As an intern, she was making copies, keeping art organized, and learning how to be an animator. “I made my dream come true,” Byrd said. “That’s why I sent the tape when I was 13.” Everything in California was new and exciting, including, to some degree, her boyfriend. “I believed, as a 16-year-old dating him, ‘Oh, the world’s against us. It shouldn’t be wrong for him to date me. We’re cool and rebellious because we’re breaking the rules of society,’” Byrd told BuzzFeed News. She said he told her their 25-year age difference was “romantic.” But she struggled. In a letter she wrote to herself during the internship — her method of working out her feelings at the time — she frets about all the ways she’s alienating her 41-year-old boyfriend with her “nagging” and her “guilt-inflicting”; she says Kricfalusi doesn’t care about her emotional well-being. “He may like my figure & face. He may adore my mind & ideas. But he does not have regard for my feelings as I do his,” she wrote. The artist she shared an office with, Swarr, who was in his early twenties at the time, remembers her frequently crying.

“I was like, ‘Who’s that little girl?’”

Despite the volatility, this seemed like a break to her: Kricfalusi was teaching her a trade. And, over the course of more than 600 blog posts reviewed by BuzzFeed News, Kricfalusi portrays himself as a uniquely qualified molder of young minds. It’s the same image he presented to Byrd and Rice, and to many of the fans, mostly men in their twenties, who he hired at Spumco in the 1990s and early 2000s. They were inexperienced young people who, Mora and Swarr said, believed deeply in the art Spumco was making. It was a small studio that usually had between 10 and 30 artists at a time, most of them convinced they were doing something defiant by working there. Derrick J. Wyatt, an artist who started working at Spumco in 1999, told BuzzFeed News the studio was a “cult of personality” centered on Kricfalusi. After Byrd graduated from high school at 17 in 1998, Kricfalusi hired her to work at Spumco and she moved back into his Los Angeles home. As Byrd grew up in the studio, her coworkers, many of whom were not much older than she was, were aware of the teen’s romantic relationship with their boss. Mora got an internship at Spumco in 1997, around the age of 24, and when he first started seeing Byrd around the studio, “I was like, ‘Who’s that little girl?’” he said. The relationship was odd to him, but it seemed to be accepted at the studio, where former employees say Kricfalusi fostered a libertine atmosphere in which taking offense was itself offensive. They were making shows with sexual themes; there were raunchy nude drawings on display. Mora said Kricfalusi left out a drawing he made of Byrd, naked, with a dog ejaculating on her. Sometime between 1998 and 2000, Mora went to a party at Kricfalusi’s house that has bothered him for years. He remembered Byrd, who was no older than 20, was drunk and seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness when Kricfalusi called Mora over to him. “And then he pulled out these Polaroids of Robyn basically — how can you say it? — going down on him. … He’s like, ‘What do you think of that?’”

“My entire life had been suspended in John's since I was fourteen.”

Byrd doesn’t remember Kricfalusi taking explicit photos of her; she also wasn’t aware, she said, that he showed explicit photos of her to other people. But Wyatt recounted an interaction with his then-boss that was similar to Mora’s. He said that at a party at Kricfalusi’s house between 1999 and 2002, Kricfalusi showed him “a stack of Polaroids” of Kricfalusi and Byrd having sex. He never mentioned the photographs to Byrd, nor did he confront Kricfalusi about the interaction. During another party at Kricfalusi’s house, Swarr said the artist pulled out a binder of photos that showed Byrd naked in his pool. “It was gross,” Swarr said. Affecting a gruff voice when he spoke as Kricfalusi, Swarr recalled, “He was like, ‘Oh, you like that?’ I was like, ‘No!’” At the time Byrd started working at Spumco, the age of consent in California had been 18 for decades. But because no one in the studio told her to leave Kricfalusi, it took longer for Byrd to realize the extent of the problem she had. “My entire life had been suspended in John's since I was fourteen,” she wrote to Rice in 2008. She told BuzzFeed News this year, “I just kind of got swept up in the whole thing.” When it came to sex with an adult man, she remembers thinking as a teen that it was something “I was supposed to do as an adult woman.”

Courtesy Robyn Byrd Kricfalusi and Byrd on Christmas Eve in 2000

In 2000, Byrd briefly broke up with Kricfalusi and moved out of the house she shared with him in LA. The pair would reunite a few months later, but in the meantime, Kricfalusi contacted Rice, who was then 18 years old and reeling from an art school rejection letter. He asked her to come work at Spumco. Receipts signed by Kricfalusi and saved by Rice show he paid for her stay at the Voyager Motor Inn in June 2000.

Rice worked for Kricfalusi on and off from age 18 to about 25, starting as an inker and moving on to layout and character design. In 2000, Byrd and Rice both worked at the studio, but the childhood internet friends never spoke face-to-face; Swarr remembers the women working at opposite ends of Spumco. Mora and Swarr believed that Kricfalusi hired Rice as a replacement for Byrd. At 19, Byrd thought so too. She said it seemed to her at the time that Kricfalusi was replacing her with a younger woman. Byrd left Kricfalusi for good in 2002. Once she was gone, he focused more attention on Rice. In emails, Kricfalusi demanded her professional loyalty. He also continued to pressure her for affection. Through a lawyer, Kricfalusi denied harassing Rice, saying, "John's avid pursuit of her romantically was all after the company went out of business and he was no longer her employer." But around the time of the new Ren & Stimpy show, which was produced by Spumco and employed Rice, he wrote her a letter expressing sadness over his breakup, and also told Rice she was pretty and that he wished he could cuddle with her.

Spumco / Spike Animation Studio Rice and Kricfalusi on the DVD intro to the Ren and Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon "Naked Beach Frenzy."

On Oct. 19, 2004, when Rice was working at Disney, 49-year-old Kricfalusi contacted Rice via her work email. He wrote that he’d been resentful, as a 41-year-old man, of the classmate Rice liked when she was 15. “You used to make me very jealous … and you would never admit you liked me in a romantic way.” At the end of that email, he begged her to be in a relationship with him, writing, “I would worship you and bve [sic] your best partner and friend and everything that would be good to be.”

Rice said the sexual harassment got worse when she worked from Kricfalusi’s home office, particularly when they were working on a music video commissioned by “Weird Al” Yankovic. (The musician said he was not aware of any of the behavior described in this story and declined to comment further.) In an email reviewed by BuzzFeed News, Rice told Byrd in 2008 that Kricfalusi “was doing all sorts of bizarre stuff- waiting naked in his living room for when I let myself into his house to work in the morning, walking around with his weiner hanging out of his pants, telling me that his friend's advice to ‘get’ me was to just rape me one day.” Through an attorney, Kricfalusi denied exposing himself to Rice, and said that the rape comment was just a joke.

Courtesy of Katie Rice Kricfalusi and Rice at her 15th birthday party

Rice’s voice rose in frustration. “I know what everybody’s gonna say: Why didn’t you just leave? Well, because this asshole told me when I was 13 that I was special, and I don’t have any self-esteem, so I believe it.” And the fact was that he had hired her, when she had no prospects, right after she was rejected from art school. As she had argued in forums online, she really did think he was a great artist. She thought that she owed her mentor and friend, and she felt a certain twisted pride in putting up with his harassment.

“I know what everybody’s gonna say: Why didn’t you just leave? Well, because this asshole told me when I was 13 that I was special, and I don’t have any self-esteem, so I believe it.”

Rice said she finally did leave after two incidents that happened in relatively close succession: The first was his half-threat of rape during the Weird Al job, and then, she said, she found child porn on his computer. Rice said she found images of girls she didn’t recognize, naked; she remembered one photo in particular, with a naked girl who appeared to be around 10 years old, lying on her back with her legs spread and an expression on her face that Rice described as fearful. An ex-girlfriend of Kricfalusi’s, who asked not to be named in this story, said she, too, saw naked images of prepubescent girls who appeared to be between 12 and 14 on his personal computer around 2007. Through an attorney, Kricfalusi said he has never possessed child porn, and that he had never been contacted by the police regarding an investigation. His attorney added, “I assure you that there are significant differences between your outline and what actually happened and when.” The attorney did not provide specifics prior to publication. Rice said it took her three attempts to report the child porn she saw on Kricfalusi’s computer. On two occasions, she said, she panicked while filling out an online form for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Rice successfully reported seeing child porn to the police at the end of 2017. Byrd said she spoke to a detective on the case as well, thinking that, even though the statute of limitations for her allegations was up, her account might bolster the investigation. The LAPD declined to comment on the case, but Rice said she was told that they wouldn’t be able to get a warrant. It was after receiving that phone call from the police that she decided to go on the record. She hopes making her story public will relieve her of the burden she feels to warn young women thinking of working for him.

Alyssa Schukar for BuzzFeed News Robyn Byrd, photographed at her home on March 23

“It’s been easy for us to disconnect the artist from the person, because as an artist, he’s unparalleled,” Mora told BuzzFeed News. He said it was hard thinking about things he and Swarr could have done to help Byrd and Rice, and he struggled to reconcile his feelings about Kricfalusi. “If I ever won an award, he would be one of the first people I would thank,” he said. “But there is that other side of John — John the man, not John the artist — and that’s the part that is conflicting.”

In a busy restaurant in Burbank, Swarr still expressed some sympathy for Kricfalusi. “I owe John a lot,” he said. “He has a lot of problems, and he can’t see them. It’s tragic. I don’t feel bad enough to not talk about this, though.” Swarr said he began distancing himself from Kricfalusi after Rice told him around 2002 that their mentor had started hitting on her when she was a child. “I wish I could’ve done more back then. This” — talking to a reporter to corroborate the women’s stories — “is the only thing I can do now.” The Paramount Network — the current iteration of Spike TV, which ran Ren & Stimpy’s 2003 reboot, Adult Party Cartoon — said it had never received reports of sexual harassment against Kricfalusi and has “specific policies and procedures to ensure our employees feel empowered to report inappropriate behavior.” A spokesperson for Cartoon Network and Adult Swim said that the networks were not aware of any sexual harassment claims against Kricfalusi, that “harassment will not be tolerated” by their parent company, and that neither network planned to work with him in the future. Nickelodeon declined to comment on Byrd and Rice’s allegations. But the morning after the story was published, Kricfalusi’s portrait was removed from the studio. Allegations of sexual misconduct have long been treated as a proverbial footnote for important men. In an industry that continues to exclude women and that has a widespread problem with sexual harassment, as more than 200 women and gender-nonconforming people working in animation attested in an open letter in October, it’s unclear whether Rice and Byrd making Kricfalusi’s abuse public will lead people to rethink his legacy. What is clear, however, is that #MeToo can’t move forward without reexamining the past. Byrd is resolute. “He ruined a good bit of my childhood and my early adulthood, gave me PTSD, and forced me to change careers, putting my life 10 years or more behind,” she wrote in an email. In an interview, she said, “He is an abuser in the way that he will pull you into a relationship with him and then tell you who to be and what he wants from you. … Everybody needs to know about it.” Rice, too, is unequivocal about Kricfalusi: “I became a better artist by working for him,” she said. “I’m not grateful for it. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I were a worse artist now and I didn’t have all this bullshit to deal with.” ●</s>The latest allegations to come out of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements focus on Ren & Stimpy Show creator John Kricfalusi. While the 62-year-old animator has floundered in recent years following 2003’s widely-panned and short-lived spin-off, Ren & Stimpy “Adult Party Cartoon,” he’s remained a powerful fixture in the animation world. According to allegations reported by BuzzFeed, Kricfalusi used that influence to prey upon young girls hoping to enter the animation industry.

The allegations against Kricfalusi are deeply disturbing. According to the now-39-year-old Robyn Byrd, she first reached out to the artist at age 13 by sending him a video tape of herself discussing her animation dreams. In the years that followed, she says, he sent her gifts, visited her at her home, and encouraged her to get an AOL account. Byrd had been thrilled by Kricfalusi’s attention, until, after flying her out to visit him in Los Angeles, he allegedly “touched her genitals through her pajamas.” She was 16, and he was 25 years her senior. Soon after, Byrd began an internship at Spümcø, Kricfalusi’s studio, and moved in with him as his girlfriend, kicking off an unhealthy on again-off again relationship that lasted several years.

Katie Rice, another aspiring animator who would eventually befriend Byrd over the Internet, became Kricfalusi’s alleged next target when his “relationship” with Byrd faltered. Rice told BuzzFeed that he also attempted to groom her for sex when she was a minor. After Rice reached out to Kricfalusi via letters, he began contacting her online and over the phone, and Rice, a teenager at the time, wrote, “I think this 40-year-old man is hitting on me” in her diary. Rice claims he allegedly tried to coerce her into saying sexual things to him over the phone, and masturbated during their phone calls. She also told BuzzFeed that once she started working with him professionally, the harassment became worse, with Kricfalusi allegedly exposing himself to her and “telling me that his friend’s advice to ‘get’ me was to just rape me one day.” (Kricfalusi denied exposing himself, and claimed the rape comment was a joke, through his lawyer.)

Although their employments at Spümcø overlapped, Byrd and Rice were reportedly stationed on separate sides of the office. It seems as though Kricfalusi and Byrd’s “relationship” was suspected within the animation community: Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story references “a girl [Kricfalusi] had been dating since she was 15 years old.” Multiple men in the industry have confirmed that rumors of Kricfalusi’s pedophilic abuse were commonplace. And multiple employees claim that Kricfalusi showed them naked photographs of Byrd, taken, according to her, without her knowledge. Kricfalusi’s creative career mirrors these accusations: He has a history of drawing women and underage girls with exaggerated, sexualized anatomies. His character Sody Pop (who, as he once bragged to Howard Stern, is underage) is one salient example.

In a statement to BuzzFeed, Kricfalusi’s lawyers said many of his alleged actions were a byproduct of undiagnosed mental illness, aggravated by his firing in 1992:

The 1990s were a time of mental and emotional fragility for Mr. Kricfalusi, especially after losing Ren and Stimpy, his most prized creation. For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend. Over the years John struggled with what were eventually diagnosed mental illnesses in 2008. To that point, for nearly three decades he had relied primarily on alcohol to self-medicate. Since that time he has worked feverishly on his mental health issues, and has been successful in stabilizing his life over the last decade. This achievement has allowed John the opportunity to grow and mature in ways he’d never had a chance at before.

You can read the full accounts from Rice and Byrd on Buzzfeed.</s>Two women have come forward alleging John Kricfalusi, creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show, preyed on them when they were underage.

In a story published by Buzzfeed News on Thursday, Robyn Byrd and Katie Rice relay stories of being groomed as teenage fans of the popular early '90s cartoon show, only to find themselves pursued sexually by Kricfalusi, now 62.

Byrd says she wrote Kricfalusi a fan letter at age 13 and was elated when the animator then 39, responded. He sent her toys and visited her at the Arizona trailer park where she lived. When she was 16, she says, he flew her to his home in Los Angeles and touched her sexually.

Buzzfeed News writes that In the summer of 1997, before her senior year of high school, he flew Byrd to Los Angeles again, offering her an internship at his studio. She lived with him as his 16-year-old girlfriend and intern and after she finished high school, Byrd moved in with him at age 17.

A lawyer for Kricfalusi admitted to Buzzfeed News that "for a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend" and detailed a period of mental illness.

Katie Rice, who also had dreams of being an animator as a teen, says Kricfalusi befriended her when she was 14, even attending her 15th birthday party. He was 40. Kricfalusi eventually hired her to work for him, beginning a long span of sexual harassment.

Rice ultimately left, she says, after he made a joke about raping her and she found child pornography on his computer.

Through an attorney, Kricfalusi told Buzzfeed News he has never possessed child porn.

In a statement to Buzzfeed News, Kricfalusi's lawyer responded to the allegations in full.

“The 1990s were a time of mental and emotional fragility for Mr. Kricfalusi, especially after losing Ren & Stimpy, his most prized creation. For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend. Over the years John struggled with what were eventually diagnosed mental illnesses in 2008. To that point, for nearly three decades he had relied primarily on alcohol to self-medicate.

"Since that time he has worked feverishly on his mental health issues, and has been successful in stabilizing his life over the last decade. This achievement has allowed John the opportunity to grow and mature in ways he’d never had a chance at before.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, Nickelodeon fired Kricfalusi in 1992 during the second season of Ren & Stimpy's five-season run, citing failure to meet delivery deadlines.

Kricfalusi's short-lived Adult Party Cartoon ran on TNN in the early 2000s. TNN, a Viacom property, which has undergone name changes and is now The Paramount Network, told USA TODAY in a statement it "never received any claims of sexual harassment (or other misconduct) against John Kricfalusi."

Nickelodeon declined to comment. Ren & Stimpy reruns still play on weeknights on TeenNick, which is part of Nickelodeon.

Kricfalusi most recently made art for Miley Cyrus’s 2014 Bangerz tour and screened a new animated short, Cans Without Labels, at a film festival in 2016.

Earlier this week, Nickelodeon cut ties with Dan Schneider, the television producer behind many of the network's most iconic and enduring programs, including All That, iCarly, Drake & Josh, Zoey 101, Victorious, Kenan & Kel and Henry Danger.</s>The creator of Ren and Stimpy has been accused of sexually abusing two teenage girls during the 1990s.

John Kricfalusi, now 62, reportedly abused them, and had a physical relationship with one, under the guise of furthering their careers in animation.

He has also been accused of possessing child pornography, a claim that he denies.

Robyn Byrd, 37, told Buzzfeed News that she sent him a video of herself talking about Ren and Stimpy when she was just 13, in the hope that it would get his attention and she could get some advice on starting a career in animation.

To her surprise, she didn’t just get a reply, Kricfalusi, then in his 40s, began sending her art supplies and when she was 16 he flew her to his LA studio, Spumco, to show her around and stay at his property.

It was there, she claims, that he touched her genitals through her pyjamas.

During her last year of high school he paid for private tuition and when she graduated she moved into his house to be his intern and 16-year-old girlfriend.

They would go onto have a sexual relationship, something that she said eventually drove her out of animation altogether.

One of the animators at Spumco, Derrick J. Wyatt, said that Kricfalusi once showed him a ‘stack of Polaroids’ of him and Byrd having sex, something Byrd says she was not aware of.

She said: ‘He ruined a good bit of my childhood and my early adulthood, gave me PTSD, and forced me to change careers, putting my life 10 years or more behind.’

In December, police reportedly told Byrd that her allegations were too old to be investigated.

Another girl, Katie Rice, said that although she never went onto have a sexual relationship, there would be late night phone calls where he would ask her to repeat: ‘John’s dick slides in my puzzy’, while he masturbated.

She added that he reportedly said: ‘His friend’s advice to ‘get’ me was to just rape me one day.’

He went to her 15th birthday party and then stopped speaking to her shortly after, but they would get back in touch and Rice would go on to work at Spumco.

Rice also alleges that she saw child porn on his computer of a girl she says looked about 10-years-old ‘lying on her back with her legs open’, and a ‘fearful’ expresison.

She added that although Kricfalusi made her ‘a better artist,’ she wished she hadn’t worked with him.

‘I wish I were a worse artist now and I didn’t have all this bullshit to deal with,’ she said.

Kricfalusi’s attorney responded to the list of allegations and said: ‘The 1990s were a time of mental and emotional fragility for Mr. Kricfalusi, especially after losing Ren and Stimpy, his most prized creation.

‘For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend. Over the years John struggled with what were eventually diagnosed mental illnesses in 2008. To that point, for nearly three decades he had relied primarily on alcohol to self-medicate.

‘Since that time he has worked feverishly on his mental health issues, and has been successful in stabilizing his life over the last decade. This achievement has allowed John the opportunity to grow and mature in ways he’d never had a chance at before.’

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MORE: Autistic boy, 11, raped by dad and girlfriend ‘because they thought he was gay’</s>BuzzFeed News reported Thursday that “Ren and Stimpy Show” creator John Kricfalusi “preyed upon” two fans when they were teenagers, making him the latest Hollywood leader to be accused of sexual misconduct in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations.

Both women, who were fans of “Ren and Stimpy” in childhood, say that Kricfalusi promised them that his studio, Spumco, would hire them some day, according to the article.

One of the women, Robyn Byrd, said she sent Kricfalusi a fan video in 1994, when she was just 13, and that she one day hoped to work for his influential Nickelodeon show, according to BuzzFeed; by age 16, she was both a Spumco intern and his girlfriend – a relationship described as “an open secret within animation.”

“In the end,” the article says, “she fled animation to get away from him.”

A decade ago, Byrd says, she reconnected with an artist she had first met through Kricfalusi: Katie Rice, who says that the “Ren and Stimpy” creator began hitting on her as a minor. He offered her a job in 2000, when she was 18, and then began sexually harassing her, she told Buzzfeed.

Both women reportedly have documents, transcripts of online conversations and witnesses to support their claims. Meanwhile, a lawyer representing Kricfalusi, 62, responded to a list of allegations against him – including sexual harassment, statutory rape and possession of child pornography – with this statement to BuzzFeed:

“The 1990s were a time of mental and emotional fragility for Mr. Kricfalusi, especially after losing ‘Ren and Stimpy,’ his most prized creation. For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend. Over the years John struggled with what were eventually diagnosed mental illnesses in 2008. To that point, for nearly three decades he had relied primarily on alcohol to self-medicate. Since that time he has worked feverishly on his mental health issues, and has been successful in stabilizing his life over the last decade. This achievement has allowed John the opportunity to grow and mature in ways he’d never had a chance at before.”

Nickelodeon fired Kricfalusi in 1992, prior to when Byrd and Rice said they were preyed upon by him. The network declined to comment on the article.

Launched more than a quarter-century ago by Krisfalusi, who directed the first couple of seasons, “The Ren and Stimpy Show” marked a distinct turn toward the surreal in mainstream TV animation, serving as bizarre blender of hilarity, grostequerie and camera-winking high jinks that influenced such next-generation shows as “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Adventure Time.”

Kricfalusi isn’t the only prominent animation creator with a scandal. Last October, Nickelodeon fired “Loud House” showrunner Chris Savino over allegations of sexual misconduct and threats of retribution made by at least a dozen women, as first reported by Cartoon Brew. Savino apologized for his actions that “created an unacceptable environment.”

Last November, Pixar co-founder and Disney Animation chief John Lasseter began a leave of absence, as first reported by Variety, after he was accused of inappropriate workplace conduct, including unwanted touching. Lasseter said he would return after a six-month sabbatical.

Follow the Bangor Daily News on Facebook for the latest Maine news.</s>When he was in his late 30s and through his 40s, “The Ren & Stimpy Show” creator John Kricfalusi had relationships with two teenage girls, one of whom he allegedly slept with for years, according to a new story by BuzzFeed News.

The allegations are the first time such claims against Kricfalusi have gone public, despite there being rumors of them for years in an industry that has considered him a legend.

“The 1990s were a time of mental and emotional fragility for Mr. Kricfalusi, especially after losing ‘Ren and Stimpy,’ his most prized creation. For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend,” an attorney for the Canadian animator, now 62, told BuzzFeed on his client’s behalf.</s>Two former employees of animator John Kricfalusi have accused the “Ren & Stimpy” creator of sexually abusing them starting when they were teenagers.

In a story deeply reported by BuzzFeed, Robyn Byrd and Katie Rice say that Kricfalusi befriended each of them in the 1990s under the guise of mentoring their animation careers.

In hindsight, the two women allege that Kricfalusi, who was in his 40s at the time, was much more interested in grooming them to be his sexual partners.

“I believed, as a 16-year-old dating him, ‘Oh, the world’s against us. It shouldn’t be wrong for him to date me. We’re cool and rebellious because we’re breaking the rules of society,’” Byrd told BuzzFeed, adding that Kricfalusi said their 25-year age difference was “romantic.”

Tony Mora, then an animator at Kricfalusi’s studio Spumco, said he thought the relationship was odd, especially after Kricfalusi showed him a drawing he’d made of a dog ejaculating on a naked Byrd.

Mora also said Kricfalusi showed him pictures of Byrd ― who was 20 at the time ― performing oral sex.

Rice said she never actually had sex with Kricfalusi, but that he sexually harassed her in all sorts of bizarre ways, including “telling me that his friend’s advice to ‘get’ me was to just rape me one day.”

Kricfalusi alluded to his “friendship” with Rice in a video extra for a “Ren & Stimpy” DVD that can be seen below.

“I was at her 15th birthday party. We’ll tell you that backstory a little bit later,” he said with a grin.

An attorney for Kricfalusi told BuzzFeed that “the 1990s were a time of mental and emotional fragility for Mr. Kricfalusi” and that he had a 16-year-old girlfriend back then.

The lawyer also said that the animator, now 62, has struggled for years with what was eventually diagnosed as mental illness in 2008:

To that point, for nearly three decades he had relied primarily on alcohol to self-medicate. Since that time he has worked feverishly on his mental health issues, and has been successful in stabilizing his life over the last decade. This achievement has allowed John the opportunity to grow and mature in ways he’d never had a chance at before.

“He ruined a good bit of my childhood and my early adulthood, gave me PTSD, and forced me to change careers, putting my life 10 years or more behind,” Byrd said.</s>In the wake of ongoing sexual misconduct revelations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, more accusers have been coming forward against other men in power. Buzzfeed News has now published an expansive investigative report about Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi, and the graphic allegations against him involve a pattern of predatory behavior against teenage girls who contacted him with hopes that he could launch their animation careers.

In short, Kricfaulsi has been accused of grooming these girls (mostly in the 1990s) and engaging in sexual conduct with them. An account from accuser Robyn Byrd details how he allegedly groped her genitals when she was 16 years old, and he was 39. He then moved her into his home for a time while they had a sexual relationship, although Byrd later “fled animation to get away from him.” The Buzzfeed piece also touches upon previous reports of Kricfaulsi’s behavior being “an open secret” within his field. And another artist, Katie Rice, alleges that he sexually harassed her for years, starting when she was 14, including late-night phone calls where he masturbated.

The full report also contains multiple allegations that Kricfaulsi was in possession of child porn. This includes images on his computer and polaroid photos of Byrd during their reported sexual encounters, which Warner Bros. art director Tony Mora and producer Gabe Swarr went on record to discuss:

Byrd doesn’t remember Kricfalusi taking explicit photos of her; she also wasn’t aware, she said, that he showed explicit photos of her to other people. But Wyatt recounted an interaction with his then-boss that was similar to Mora’s. He said that at a party at Kricfalusi’s house between 1999 and 2002, Kricfalusi showed him “a stack of Polaroids” of Kricfalusi and Byrd having sex. He never mentioned the photographs to Byrd, nor did he confront Kricfalusi about the interaction. During another party at Kricfalusi’s house, Swarr said the artist pulled out a binder of photos that showed Byrd naked in his pool. “It was gross,” Swarr said. Affecting a gruff voice when he spoke as Kricfalusi, Swarr recalled, “He was like, ‘Oh, you like that?’ I was like, ‘No!’”

In response to an inquiry from Buzzfeed, Kricfalusi’s attorney stated the following about his client: “For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend.” The attorney then painted the 1990s as a period of “fragility” for Kricfalusi, who he insists is now a more stable and mature person who has struggled with mental illness and alcohol. The full (and extremely disturbing) Buzzfeed piece can be read here.</s>When he was in his late 30s and through his 40s, “The Ren & Stimpy Show” creator John Kricfalusi had relationships with two teenage girls, one of whom he allegedly slept with for years, according to a new story by BuzzFeed News.

The allegations are the first time such claims against Kricfalusi have gone public, despite there being rumors of them for years in an industry that has considered him a legend.

“The 1990s were a time of mental and emotional fragility for Mr. Kricfalusi, especially after losing ‘Ren and Stimpy,’ his most prized creation. For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend,” an attorney for the Canadian animator, now 62, told BuzzFeed on his client’s behalf.

Katie Rice and Robyn Byrd both told BuzzFeed they initially mailed Kricfalusi around the same time, in the mid-’90s. He later introduced them to each other online, saying he would one day hire them at Spumco, his company.</s>The creator of the popular Nickelodeon children’s show The Ren & Stimpy Show has been accused by two women of making sexual advances toward them when they were underage.

The accusations against John Kricfalusi, 62, are set out in detail in a new report by BuzzFeed News.

One of the women, Robin Byrd, told the outlet she was 13 when she sent the cartoonist a video about her ambition to create cartoons like him. They then, she says, started up a friendship which turned sexual three years later.

She alleges that when she was 16, he flew her to Los Angeles and, while staying at his home, touched her genitals through her pajamas. The incidents allegedly continued and culminated when Kricfalusi flew her to Los Angeles for an internship at his studio, Spumco, and she started living with him as his girlfriend and intern, BuzzFeed reports.

Kricfalusi’s attorney responded to the allegations by telling BuzzFeed News that the animator was mentally and emotionally fragile during the 1990s, when the women allege the incidents took place, “especially after losing Ren and Stimpy, his most prized creation.”

Kricfalusi’s attorney denied that his client exposed himself or that he was ever in possession of child porn as was also alleged by one of the women.
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“For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend. Over the years John struggled with what were eventually diagnosed mental illnesses in 2008,” his attorney told the outlet. “To that point, for nearly three decades he had relied primarily on alcohol to self-medicate. Since that time he has worked feverishly on his mental health issues, and has been successful in stabilizing his life over the last decade. This achievement has allowed John the opportunity to grow and mature in ways he’d never had a chance at before.”

Byrd alleged she moved in with him at 17 after she graduated from high school in Arizona.

“He ruined a good bit of my childhood and my early adulthood,” Byrd told BuzzFeed in an email. “[He] gave me PTSD, and forced me to change careers, putting my life 10 years or more behind.”

“He is an abuser in the way that he will pull you into a relationship with him and then tell you who to be and what he wants from you,” she added.

Katie Rice, an artist, alleges she was 14 when Kricfalusi took an interest in her. They began speaking to each other on AOL, where the conversations between them made her feel special, she told BuzzFeed News.

When she was 15 Kricfalusi allegedly sent her messages such as, “I’m crazy about you, Katie,” and “Do I ever make you tingle?”

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While they never had sexual contact, Rice claims Kricfalusi once masturbated while they were speaking on the phone.

The sexual harassment mounted, she claims, when she began working for him in 2000 when she was 18. In one instance, Rice alleges, she was working at Kricfalusi’s home studio when he appeared walking around his living room “with his weiner hanging out of his pants.”

Rice claims she once found photographs of naked girls, one of whom appeared to be around 10 years of age, on his computer. She told BuzzFeed News she attempted to report the images to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children three times.

Kricfalusi’s attorney expressly denied his client was ever in possession of child pornography.

“I became a better artist by working for him,” she said. “I’m not grateful for it. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I were a worse artist now and I didn’t have all this bulls—to deal with.”
A pair of women accuse The Ren & Stimpy Show creator John Kricfalusi of sexually abusing them in the 1990s while they were minors. Kricfalusi, who was in his 40s at the time, admitted to Buzzfeed that he had an underage girlfriend during the years in question.