Allegedly $125,000 to sign the papers and go away. They say the signature was made under pressure with the signer still saying he was underage when it began.

There's a very dark Sandusky joke in here somewhere.

After a second accuser filed his own lawsuit alleging that he had an affair with Kevin Clash that started when he was 15, Clash resigned from the Sesame Workshop cast. But Elmo will still be there, because Sesame Workshop owns all of the Muppets that have been used on Sesame Street except for Kermit.

A lawyer has also claimed two other possible young men and brought up the possibility of a lawsuit. It's good for everyone that he's breaking off from Sesame Street so quickly.

On the one hand, where there's a single alleged payoff, there will be people lining up to get the next. On the other, this is a lot of stepping forward in a very short time, and that is going to trigger echoes. I won't call guilt yet, but this is starting to look ultra-bad.

And yet -- I keep thinking about how much worse this could have been. Skew things a few years younger still and then consider the sheer amount of access...

*nods*

These things never seem to come individually, in either direction (those abusing or those trying to scam money when they smell blood in the water).

Yep, could be worse given who he could likely get access to.

Working parental definition of hell: there's a character whom just about every little kid instinctively trusts, they transfer that feeling to the person who provides that character's voice, and that actor is a pedophile who has kids lining up to reach him. Gah. That's not a Very Special SVU Episode, that's a Dante circle unto itself.

LAST EDITED ON 11-21-12 AT 04:05 PM (EST)

>On the one hand, where there's a single alleged payoff, there
>will be people lining up to get the next.

The Michael Jackson case was a prime example of that. Michael may well have been a predator, but the second case was so weak that it only got to trial because the legal system didn't want to look like "money can buy your way out of everything".

And see the allegations in Syracuse against basketball assistant Bernie Fine, which totally blew up -- except for the Davis allegations, which happened so long ago that there is no evidence one way or the other -- which, in turn, makes it difficult to believe the Davis allegations, because such cases rarely occur in isolation. I'm looking forward to the Fines' libel suit against ESPN.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/8610174/feds-drop-case-ex-syracuse-orange-coach-bernie-fine

>On the other, this is a lot of stepping forward
>in a very short time, and that is going to
>trigger echoes. I won't call guilt yet, but this
>is starting to look ultra-bad.

Yeah, the grouping of charges creates the appearance of a real pattern of statutory rape. But it's too early to know.

Over in the UK - Jimmy Saville

Actually I seem to remember that there were unsavoury rumours about him whilst I was at school over 30 years ago.

First ever person to use two turntables, so the first ever DJ, but the anguished cries are because he did so much for charity, raised so many millions, helped so many children... And it all starts to feel horrible again.