>>7 Yes, Kuma was very lecherous. Probably still is, although the meme popularity has faded by now.
About Pedobear, my guess is that Westerners regularly saw Japanese posting drawings of underage girls in their BBSes and saw that the other Japanese would always reply with an AA of Kuma being all excited, and concluded that Kuma was a lolicon. Far from all Japanese are/were pro-lolicons, but the pro-lolis would invariably use the Kuma AA to reply, which makes the mistake(?) understandable.