You thought you were out of the woods on explaining the Elmo sex scandal. Well you were wrong. Dead wrong. Puppeteer Kevin Clash, beloved for creating Sesame Street's Elmo character and also for creating this sex scandal, now faces three accusers who claim that Clash trolled gay phone chat lines to find underage teenagers to seduce at his home. And now you're asking yourself, "which gay phone chat lines, exactly, for research?" And also, "how can I tell my kids?"

Luckily for you, Gawker is here with another edition of "How to Explain the Elmo Sex Scandal to Your Kids." As with our previous installment, simply read the text aloud to your children while showing them these photos, featuring many of their favorite characters.

The Tale of Elmo and His Several Underage Male Friends


the Sequel to The Tale of Elmo and His Adult Male Friend
A re-enactment staged by Caity Weaver, Jim Cooke & Max Read

This is a story about Elmo, Elmo's three friends, and the spirituous elixir that is Fame.

Once upon a time, there lived an Adult Male Friend who became famous when he told a fib that his friend Elmo had invited him to a grown up sleepover when he was just an Adult Male Boy. Thanks to this fib, the Adult Male Friend got lots of money to buy candy. When people got mad at him for fibbing to get money, he told everyone that he had been fibbing when he said that the first fib was a fib. He said that "fib" was actually a truth. He said he would give back all his candy money if people would stop calling him a fibber. No one could.

But this story isn't about him. It's about Elmo and two of Elmo's other friends.

One silly sally day, Elmo left Sesame Street for good. He hugged all his friends goodbye and told them he would miss them. He didn't want to leave Sesame Street, but people had started to whisper that Elmo was a fibber. Sesame Street is a place for learning, not for lying, and certainly not for sex crimes, so Elmo had to leave.

Why did Elmo have to leave Sesame Street? Well, another friend of Elmo's — a friend named Cecil — told everyone (again) that Elmo was a fibber.

Like Elmo's first friend, Cecil said that Elmo had misbehaved with him when he was just a little boy. Cecil said that he had met Elmo while calling numbers he wasn't supposed to call when he was 15. He said that Elmo wasn't a muppet at all, but a dirty old troll who "trolled gay telephone chat line rooms" looking for boys to misbehave with.

One of the bad things Cecil and Elmo did was wrestle with their clothes on inside the house where anything could get knocked over.

One day, Cecil and Elmo couldn't be friends anymore because Elmo was a bad influence. Cecil says the bad things he did with Elmo scarred him, like when you skin your knee on the sidewalk, only this scar was invisible because it was on his soul.

He asked Elmo to give him $5,000,000 to say "Sorry" for the invisible scar.

After Cecil, another one of Elmo's friends said that he had met Elmo while making bad phone calls too. This friend didn't want to tell anyone his name, so everyone called him "John Doe." "John Doe" is like a mask for your real name.

John Doe went to Elmo's fancy apartment in The Big Apple. John Doe didn't know who Elmo was, but he saw pictures of him with famous people, so he knew Elmo must be important. Elmo gave him bad-tasting apple juice that was just for adults, even though John Doe wasn't an adult.

Then Elmo pretended to be John's daddy...

...but not in a way most daddies would act.

Elmo also poked John in an uncomfortable place that daddies should not touch.

John did not like this, and he and Elmo stopped being friends.

After John Doe and Elmo stopped being friends, John Doe decided to write a book about what it was like to spend time with famous friend. He thought someone might pay a lot of money for the book some day, because Elmo has a lot of fame.

And fame is very expensive.

Fin

Dramatis Personae
Elmo . . . Elmo
Cecil . . . Derpy Doo
John Doe . . . Spider-Man
A Lawyer . . . The Obamarator
Dolls furnished by Kyle Wagner and Adrian Chen