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.”
The former actor not only claimed in the 202 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.
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.”