Inset: “Tickle Me Elmo” doll (Oakland County Sheriff’s Office). Background: Kevin Wayne VanLuven (Oakland County Sheriff’s Office).
Surveillance footage from Michigan shows a home inspector sexually pleasuring himself on a “Tickle Me Elmo” doll in a 2-year-old boy’s room. As previously reported, the child’s mother happened to check out the at-home surveillance camera in order to review the status of the inspection, only to find that the defendant, Kevin Wayne VanLuven, had betrayed her trust.
“What if he had an STD and our son played with that or anything?” she told Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV in 2021. “What if we didn’t know? We have a toddler and a newborn baby too. There’s nothing more worse than when somebody comes to your home and you trust them to do a job and they go as hard as to do something like that in your child’s bedroom.”
Jurors convicted VanLuven in October 2022 with aggravated indecent exposure and acquitted him of malicious destruction of personal property less than $200.
Footage showed him standing at the bedroom closet, facing away from the camera, and committing the act. He then zipped up and placed the doll out of frame on the other side of the room. As he did so, the Elmo doll is heard emitting a prerecorded laugh. VanLuven stood up, and while breathing hard, appeared to briefly make eye contact with the camera.
He was sentenced in December 2022 to 19 days of jail with credit for time served, and 18 months of probation, but records show he was convicted in January 2024 of violating probation.
More Law&Crime coverage: Elderly sex offender arrested after repeatedly dressing up as Elmo at Utah farmers market
