Opening Up

Corey Feldman: We Were ‘Passed Back And Forth’ By Hollywood Abusers

As the spotlight returns to the issue of child sexual abuse in Hollywood, one of its most famous survivors opens up.

Elijah Wood may have rowed back on his recent headline-grabbing assertion that Hollywood is a nest of ‘vipers’ who prey on children, saying his comments were based not on his own experiences and observations but rather on news reports and the 2015 documentary film An Open Secret, but another former child star, Corey Feldman, is using the focus Wood has provided on Hollywood child abuse to speak out about the abuse he suffered as a child actor.

The former child star, famous from movies such as The Goonies, Stand by Me and The Lost Boys has given a lengthy interview to The Hollywood Reporter about the abuse he suffered and the dangers of internet-era child predators in Hollywood, a place “where adults have more direct and inappropriate connection with children than probably anywhere else in the world.”

He says he and his friends were ‘passed back and forth’ between a group of male abusers.

He tells the publication that he has, “had to go through a lot of therapy and group therapy and rehabilitation” as a result of the abuse he suffered but is now a ‘happy man’.

He says that unlike his friend and peer Corey Haim, the abuse he suffered, "was not actual rape”.

He said that although he would love to be the first to “name names” he cannot, as California’s statute of limitations means that he would be sued if he did so.

Feldman says that one of the men who abused him “is still prominently in the business today,” and although he has “run into” him many times adds, “I've never confronted him.”

“All these men were all friends. Ask anybody in our group of kids at that time: They were passing us back and forth to each other. [Alison Arngrim] from Little House on the Prairie said, "Everybody knew that the two Coreys were just being passed around." Like it was something people joked about on studio lots. We're not talking about huge executives and directors that I am aware of that were involved in this. The people that I knew doing it were publicists, they were photographers for teen magazines, things like that….They would throw these parties where you'd walk in and it would be mostly kids and there would be a handful of adult men.”

Asked if he thinks about his friend Corey Haim often, he says, “Every day. He was my best friend. I miss the chemistry, I miss having my best friend.”

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Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

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