LOS ANGELES – Former child star Corey Feldman has announced he is planning to make a documentary to expose an alleged network of paedophiles working in Hollywood.
In a video posted to Twitter, the 46-year-old musician said he was raising US$10 million (S$13.7 million) to fund a film providing an “honest and true depiction of child abuse” in the industry.
“What I am proposing is a plan that I believe can literally change the entertainment system as we know it. And I believe that I can also bring down, potentially, a paedophile ring that I have been aware of since I was a child,” Feldman said.
“Right off the bat, I can name six names, one of them who is still very powerful today. And a story that links all the way up to a studio. It connects paedophilia to one of the major studios.”
Feldman, who appeared in cult 1980s movies such as Gremlins, The Goonies and The Lost Boys, has long claimed that his career was destroyed for campaigning against what he describes as a Hollywood paedophile ring that abused him as a child.
Feldman says he and fellow child star Corey Haim, who died of pneumonia in 2010, were abused by studio executives as they were making a name for themselves, including “some of the richest, most powerful people in this business.”
“Ever since I discussed the fact that I have this plan, my life has turned to utter chaos,” he explained in the seven-minute video.
“I’ve been silenced my whole life, but just over the past few days since I made that announcement, I’ve been arrested, I had a near-death experience last night where I felt like I was almost going to be killed. Two trucks came speeding at me at the same time on a crosswalk.”
The actor and fellow members of the band Corey Feldman and the Angels were fined by police in Louisiana last week after marijuana was found during a search of their tour bus.
Feldman’s Truth Campaign – which had received pledges for US$107,000 via the fundraising website Indiegogo by midday Thursday – will finance the production and distribution of the documentary.
Feldman is also seeking help to “buy the security and the legal team that I need to help my family until the project is released.”
A cascade of accounts by women of sexual abuse has flooded social media under the hashtag #MeToo since a scandal surrounding movie mogul Harvey Weinstein erupted this month.
It prompted new calls for justice from Feldman, who took to Twitter a week ago to share his own experience of abuse in a seven-message tirade.
