Yahoo Lifestyle Corey Feldman Recalls 'Shocking' Exchange With Barbara Walters Over Child Sex Abuse
Corey Feldman still remembers Barbara Walters for dismissing his deepest secret.
The “Goonies” star visited “The View” to promote his memoir “Coreyography” in 2013, in which he candidly detailed the child sexual abuse he says he endured from numerous Hollywood insiders, only for Walters to tell him: “You’re damaging an entire industry.”
“It was like a knife in the heart,” Feldman told Entertainment Weekly in an interview Thursday. “It was shocking to me that somebody who I admired so much and I looked up to so much could be so deaf and just so completely wrong and off base.”
His comments arrive weeks after the Investigation Discovery documentary series, “Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,” accused several Nickelodeon insiders of child sexual abuse. Feldman, a former child star himself, has spoken about this issue for years.
The former actor not only claimed in the 2020 documentary “My Truth: The Rape of 2 Coreys” that Charlie Sheen raped his friend Corey Haim — a claim Sheen denies — but told The Guardian in 2020 “the biggest problem in Hollywood is pedophilia.”
He didn’t mince words about it on “The View” in 2013.
“I’m saying that there are people ... that did this to both me and Corey, that are still working, they’re still out there, and they’re some of the richest, most powerful people in this business,” he told Walters. “And they do not want me saying what I’m saying right now.”
When he doubled down on the claim, Walters accused him of “damaging” the industry.
“I never got an apology,” he said Thursday about Walters, who died at 93 in 2022. “The only apology I’ve ever gotten is from a few Twitter followers who’ve said, we all want to apologize on her behalf for the fact that she never acknowledged you or apologized.”
Feldman told Walters after her comment at the time that child sexual abuse in Hollywood is “a very important, serious topic.” Social media users have increasingly agreed, particularly after the revelations about financier Jeffrey Epstein became public and bolstered the notion.
“It very much gave everybody, I think, the feeling that she was either part of it or covering up for it,” Feldman told Entertainment Weekly about Walters so leisurely dismissing his accusations, “which is shocking and scary.”
Epstein, a billionaire who hobnobbed with Prince Andrew and several former U.S. presidents, was arrested in 2019 on charges of sex trafficking minors and died by suicide the next month at 66 while being held in jail. Walters’ name appeared in Epstein’s “little black book” of high-profile contacts.
While previously named Jon Grissom as one of his abusers, Feldman has yet to identify the others he purportedly knows about.
Feldman, who previously named Jon Grissom as one of his abusers, said Thursday that while “Quiet on Set” gives him hope, people keep seemingly ignoring his story.
“Honestly, nobody in Hollywood has really stood with me during this, and it’s been really rough, but you never know,” he told EW. “Tides seem to be changing, and the tides seemed to be turning. And hopefully maybe one day somebody will care enough.”
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.
