Actor Corey Feldman has added to Elijah Wood's comments about child abuse in Hollywood. Photo / Getty Images, AP
Actor Corey Feldman has added to Elijah Wood's comments about child abuse in Hollywood. Photo / Getty Images, AP
Following Elijah Wood's claims of child abuse running rife in Hollywood, another former child star, Corey Feldman, has spoken out about his own experiences.
Feldman (The Goonies, The Lost Boys) has been open about the issue and his own abuse before, addressing it in past interviews, his reality series The Two Coreys and his 2013 memoir, Coreyography.
Now, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Feldman has elaborated on Wood's claims, and warns that the internet is making it easier than ever for this kind of abuse to continue.
Referring to the parties Wood spoke about, Feldman backed up claims that children were groomed there.
"Ask anybody in our group of kids at that time; they were passing us back and forth to each other," Feldman said.
"We're not talking about huge executives and directors that I am aware of ... the people that I knew doing it were publicists, they were photographers for teen magazines, things like that."
He said they would throw parties where it would be mostly kids - usually 10-16 years old - and "a handful of adult men", and those same men would also be at film awards and children's charity functions.
That's when they'd make friends with the kids and get the parents' phone numbers, so that when they called asking to take the child to an event, the parents would let them go no questions asked.
And while Wood's mother kept him from those parties and in doing so protected him from those experiences, Feldman was not only allowed to go, but in some cases his abusers were even invited to his home.
"There's a picture in my book at my 15th birthday party. My father had the party at his office ... the main guy who molested me, he actually was an employee of my father's. My father hired this man and this man coaxed me into trying every single drug that I ever tried," Feldman said.
American television and film actor Corey Feldman, 1986. Photo / Getty Images
Feldman said he and other children, including Corey Haim, were molested and even raped.
But as much as he'd like to, he cannot name names even though one of the men who abused him is still "prominently in the business today".
"I'd love to be the first to do it. But ... if I were to go and mention anybody's name I would be the one that would be in legal problems and I'm the one that would be sued," he told The Hollywood Reporter.
"We should be talking to the district attorneys and the lawmakers in California, especially because this is where the entertainment industry is and this is a place where adults have more direct and inappropriate connection with children than probably anywhere else in the world."
And the internet is giving them even more connection, he said, allowing predators to create fake profiles and reach out to kids on social media.
"And they say, 'I'm a big producer and I can help you.' With social media we have more access than ever to everybody. It's a growing problem, not a shrinking problem," Feldman said.
Haim died at the age of 38 in 2010 after years of drug addiction, Feldman said "his body just couldn't hold up anymore".
"I miss the chemistry, I miss having my best friend ... It's just very, a very hard thing to accept, especially when I know he was doing so well. That's the thing that's so troubling - is that he was finally getting it together."
