3 sex abuse lawsuits against Elmo actor dismissed
Kevin Clash, Elmo's puppeteer, attended the 34th Kennedy Center Honors program in 2011.
The 2nd Circuit U.S.
Court of Appeals made its ruling April 2 in the case of puppeteer Kevin
Clash, who resigned from his job after allegations first surfaced in
November 2012. The ruling agrees with a lower court's decision that the
accusers waited too long to file their suits.
The appellate court's
decision on the three New York lawsuits does not cover a separate
lawsuit, filed in Pennsylvania last year, by Clash's first public
accuser. No resolution of the Pennsylvania case has been announced.
CNN's attempt to contact Clash's attorney for comment Thursday wasn't immediately successful.
A district judge had
dismissed the New York suits last July, ruling that the statute of
limitations -- which requires a filing within six years of the alleged
crime or three years after the plaintiffs turned 18 -- had run out.
The plaintiffs -- all
adult men who said they were courted and seduced by Clash when they were
underage teenagers -- appealed, arguing the six-year rule should have
applied from 2012. That, they contended, was the year they realized
they'd been harmed.
The appellate court ruled
that the lower court properly dismissed the suits "given that the
plaintiffs' complaints failed to provide any reason why the plaintiffs
were unable to discover their injuries prior to 2012."
Clash provided the
high-pitched voice of the iconic furry red Elmo from 1984 until 2012,
when Sheldon Stephens became the first to publicly claim that he had a
sexual relationship with Clash as a teen.
Stephens called it an
"adult consensual relationship" in November 2012, but filed the
Pennsylvania lawsuit in March 2013 alleging Clash threw a crystal meth
sex party for him in 2004, when he was 16. Stephens' attorney was not
immediately available for comment Thursday.
Clash acknowledged a
relationship between "two consenting adults" when Stephens' story
initially emerged, but he said it otherwise was a "false and defamatory
allegation."
"I am a gay man," Clash,
53, said in a statement in November 2012. "I have never been ashamed of
this or tried to hide it, but felt it was a personal and private
matter."
That month, Clash issued
a written statement saying: "I am resigning from Sesame Workshop with a
very heavy heart. I have loved every day of my 28 years working for
this exceptional organization. Personal matters have diverted attention
away from the important work Sesame Street is doing and I cannot allow
it to go on any longer. I am deeply sorry to be leaving and am looking
forward to resolving these personal matters privately."
Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit educational organization behind "Sesame Street."
