Elmo Accuser Recants His Recanting

This is going to get ugly

The dragging of Elmo's name into the mud has begun again. With a lot less to lose than Kevin Clash (aka the voice of Elmo), the man behind Clash's underage sex allegations, Sheldon Stephens, apparently won't take the $125,000 settlement he already accepted, and is now sticking by his original story: that Clash had sex with him when he was 16.

Stephens "claims he was pressured into recanting it, and is now interviewing lawyers to help him undo his settlement," reads the report from TMZ this morning. TMZ has been with this case since the beginning, first breaking news of Stephens's allegations and legal action about a week ago. Since then, we've seen Clash take a leave of absence from Sesame Street, stumbled upon a few inappropriate e-mails, discovered via the Smoking Gun that Stephens was previously arrested for robbing $250,000 in jewelry from a music manager, and, after that, watched Stephens recant his story and settle for a settlement. And, after that, a long, journalistic debate at Poynter about how how much attention should be paid in repairing Clash's name.