{"id":18204,"date":"2012-11-22T14:18:21","date_gmt":"2012-11-22T19:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=18204"},"modified":"2012-11-20T14:50:59","modified_gmt":"2012-11-20T19:50:59","slug":"kevin-clash-accuser-says-he-was-paid-to-recant-underage-sex-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=18204","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Clash Accuser Says He Was Paid To Recant Underage Sex Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Sheldon Stephens<\/strong>, the young man who initially accused<em> Sesame Street <\/em>puppeteer <strong>Kevin Clash<\/strong> of having a sexual relationship with him when he was only 16 years old, only to later recant the claims, has changed his story yet again.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Stephens<\/strong> now says he was paid $125,000 to take back his story in a settlement agreement with<strong> Clash<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve learned <strong>Stephens<\/strong> has met with lawyers in Los Angeles and told them he was pressured into recanting his allegation and insists he\u2019s telling the truth when he says he had sex with <strong>Clash<\/strong> when he was 16.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Clash<\/strong> has never denied that a sexual relationship with <strong>Stephens <\/strong>took place, but he has always maintained that it was consensual and took place when Stephens was at the legal age of consent.<\/p>\n<p>The performer is most famous for his work as Elmo, the beloved and popular children\u2019s character.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sheldon Stephens, the young man who initially accused Sesame Street puppeteer Kevin Clash of having a sexual relationship with him when he was only 16 years old, only to later recant the claims, has changed his story yet again. Stephens now says he was paid $125,000 to take back his story in a settlement agreement [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}