Corey Feldman has been trying to get people to listen to his stories of sexual abuse for a long, long time – but it seems like a lot of people just haven’t wanted to hear what he has to say.
Within Hollywood, it seems the stories were circulating back in the 1980s. Alison Arngrim, who starred in Little House On The Prairie, remembers the gossip about Feldman and fellow child star Corey Haim.
“People said, ‘Oh yeah, the Coreys, everyone’s had them,’” Arngrim told Fox News in 2011. “I literally heard that they were ‘passed around’. The word was that they were given drugs and being used for sex.”
My Truth: The Rape of Two Coreys will only be aired once, in a global worldwide stream. Post continues below video.
Feldman started out in show business at the age of three, when he shot his first TV commercial. His father Bob was a musician, his mother Sheila was a cocktail waitress and his older sister Mindy was a member of The New Mickey Mouse Club.
Feldman found fame in The Goonies and Stand By Me. He bonded with Haim when the two of them co-starred in the 1987 movie The Lost Boys. Feldman says it wasn’t long before Haim confided in him that he’d “allowed himself to be sodomised” on the set of the film Lucas.
In 2017, actor Dominick Brascia made the claim in the National Enquirer that the abuser was Charlie Sheen, a claim denied by Sheen’s spokesperson.
Feldman told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016 that his mother let him go to parties where there were “mostly kids”, aged 10 to 16, but also a handful of adult men who were grooming them.
“That’s the networking, and that’s when you become pals with them,” he said.
Feldman has said on several occasions that the main guy who molested him was an employee of his father’s. In 2017, when speaking to talk-show host Dr Mehmet Oz, he finally put a name to the man he alleges abused him: actor Jon Grissom. US media confirmed that Grissom is a convicted sex offender.
But at the time, Feldman didn’t tell his father what was going on.
“As a child you don’t really do that,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
Although Feldman was also friends with accused sex offender Michael Jackson when he was young, he says the pop star didn’t abuse him
It was 1993 when Feldman, by then in his twenties, finally went to the Santa Barbara Police Department with his allegations. Although years had passed, the crimes were still within the 10-year statute of limitations.
Feldman says he named his alleged abusers. A spokesperson for the police department says their records “do not indicate that he named any names”.
Sean Astin, who co-starred with Feldman in The Goonies, says people often ask Feldman why he didn’t go to law enforcement officials.
“He says, ‘I did go to the cops. I told them I’ve been molested, here are the names, but Michael Jackson is not that guy,’” Astin said recently. “All they wanted was to get Michael Jackson, so they didn’t follow his leads.”
Feldman developed drug problems and his career took a nosedive. Haim’s drug issues were even more serious.
In 2007, on their reality show The Two Coreys, the duo said they had been molested when they were starting out in Hollywood.
“That was one of those things that we’d discussed not bringing up,” Feldman told GQ. “And then Haim brought it up anyway.”
Haim died in 2010, aged just 38. He had at least eight substances in his system, including marijuana, with his official cause of death named as pneumonia.
According to Feldman, Haim begged him to tell his story if he died first.
“Nobody knows what it feels like to constantly console somebody whose life has been ruined by rape.” Feldman told Rolling Stone last year, “unless you’ve been there, holding them when they cry, bringing them back to life over and over, stopping them from walking around with a knife.”
“I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to tell his story. I didn’t ask for any of it.”
With his friend gone, Feldman became even more vocal about the alleged abuse the two of them had suffered. He went into detail in his 2013 memoir Coreyography, although a lawyer compelled him to change names, at risk of putting himself into a costly law suit.
Even then, Feldman was criticised for what he was saying. On talk show The View, he claimed the people that had done things to him and Haim were still working.
“They’re still out there, and they are some of the richest, most powerful people in this business,” he said. “And they do not want me saying what I am saying right now.”
As Feldman went on, co-host Barbara Walters interrupted him by saying, “You’re damaging an entire industry!”
He hoped for better in 2018, with Lifetime’s 2018 biopic titled A Tale of Two Coreys, but again events were sanitised for legal reasons.
Following on from his 2017 appearance on the Dr Oz show, Feldman again went to the Los Angeles police with his claims of a paedophile ring operating within Hollywood.
“Officially the first formal report ever taken on any of my cases, as SBPD never followed up back in 1993, and has no record of my complaints,” he tweeted.
“When I say I need protection, I’m not being paranoid, or acting delusional,” he told USA Today. “In fact, my concerns are quite valid.”
Now, in the wake of #MeToo and the Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey scandals, Feldman has gone fully independent in order to make us stand up and listen to the true extent of his allegations.
Speaking to Rolling Stone in April 2019, Feldman said he believed he could bring down a paedophile ring that he had been aware of since he was a child.
“Right off the bat, I can name six names, one of them who is still very powerful today. [It’s] a story that links all the way up to a studio [and] connects paedophilia to one of the major studios,” he said.
On March 9, 2020, Feldman will release a documentary titled My Truth: The Rape of Two Coreys,
The documentary, which will air just once at the same time worldwide via a global stream on March 9, will feature interviews with former co-stars of the Coreys, including Keith Coogan, Jamison Newlander, Susie Feldman, and the late Kristoff St John, speaking about the topic of child abuse in Hollywood
The film also includes current stories of abuse, including a rare interview with former Disney TV Star Ricky Garcia who recently filed charges against his own manager and his former agent from APA in Hollywood.
“I am able to say the names of who did what and the details of who did what,” Feldman confirmed about the film.
#MYTRUTHDOC OFFICIAL TRAILER IS BLOWING THE HELL UP ON @YouTube AFTER ONLY LESS THAN 48 HRS WE HAV GOTTEN 100k VIEWS, NOT BAD 4 A LIL INDY DOC…..#MYTRUTHISCOMING #Kids2 #PRESERVEINNOCENCE #JOINTHEREVOLUTION #ARMYOFLOVE #FELDFAMSTRONG https://t.co/qa89sAy5Wi
— Corey Feldman (@Corey_Feldman) February 13, 2020
“There is going to be people who are going to be very unhappy that this is coming out. People who want it silenced. Nothing can stop it at this point. That’s why we’re only showing it one time. We want to get it out. I’ve done my job, I’ve kept my promise.”
Feldman claimed he has received threats and attempts on his life by people who don’t want the truth to come out.
“There are things you have to do for insurance reasons when you’re putting out something like this. This is very, very dangerous stuff and it’s very risky stuff. You know we have to have 24-hour armed security, we don’t know what’s gonna happen,” he said in a live video on Twitter.
“Of course we have fear, there’s been two attempts on my life. There obviously could be more, we hope not but we don’t know what’s going to happen… It’s scary, it’s very, very scary.”
Though he’s been unsuccessful for decades, Feldman has been dogged in his continued attempts for justice for his and Haim’s alleged abuse.
Years in the making, Feldman is hoping this documentary finally blows the lid off child abuse in Hollywood. And maybe now, we’re finally ready to listen.
