Elijah Wood recently made headlines for his comments about the prominence of pedophilia in Hollywood, but this is a problem that the industry has been dealing with for a long while.
Corey Feldman
Corey Feldman detailed the abuse he endured with fellow child actor and close friend Corey Haim in his 2013 memoir Coreyography. Haim died of pneumonia in 2010, a death Feldman admits he still feels guilt over due to the role he played in Haim’s introduction to drugs when they were kids. The two were also abused by two men in the industry Feldman calls Ron Crimson and Tony Burnham, pseudonyms for the real Hollywood criminals.
Macaulay Culkin
Following charges that Michael Jackson had molested underage boys, rumors began swirling that Macaulay Culkin was among his victims. Culkin was known to be a friend of Jackson and someone who had spent time at Neverland ranch as a boy. Culkin adamantly denied the rumors, and Jackson was found not guilty in his 2005 trial, People v. Jackson.
Bob Villard
Bob Villard was a prominent manager in Hollywood who had mentored young, rising actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Villard pleaded no contest to charges in 2005 concerning evidence that he sold pictures of boys “often pictured shirtless, in subservient poses,” online. He was convicted to eight years in prison.
Brian Peck
Horrifyingly, actor Brian Peck admitted to molesting his protégé, according to Radar Online. Yet, despite his confession, he is still a working actor in the industry. He’s even continued to work on children’s movies, like Jack and the Beanstalk!
‘An Open Secret’
This 2014 documentary investigated child actors who had spoken out about the abuse in the entertainment industry. Multiple actors came forward accusing Hollywood heavyweights like Michael Harrah, Marc Collins-Rector and Brian Peck.
Jason James Muray
Jason James Murphy was a casting agent who worked on films like The School of Rock, Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and Three Stooges. But in 2011, the Los Angeles Times broke the news that Murphy had been hiding a past of pedophilia. He had been convicted of kidnapping and sexually abusing an 8-year-old boy in 1996.
Martin Weiss
According to Fox News, when Weiss was charged with sexually abusing a former client who was just 12 years old, the victim told authorities that “what they were doing was common practice in the entertainment industry.” Weiss was a Hollywood manager. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Fernando Rivas
Fernando Rivas was an award-winning composer for Sesame Street. In 2011, he was arraigned on charges of coercing a child “to engage in sexually explicit conduct,” Fox News reported. He had also been charged with production and distribution of child pornography. In one instance, he created child pornography with a 4-year-old female victim. He was sentenced to 15 years.
Todd Bridges
In 2010, Diff’rent Strokes actor Todd Bridges spoke out about his sexual abuse experience in Hollywood. When he was just 11 years old, his publicist molested him. He told Oprah, “I’m past it but it still hurts because it ruined my life. I spent the rest of my time trying to cover up how I felt about it, that pain.”
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