Corey Feldman Recalls ‘Shocking’ Exchange With Barbara Walters About Child Sexual Abuse

Corey Feldman still remembers Barbara Walters for exposing his deepest secret.

The “Goonies” star went on “The View” to promote his 2013 memoir “Coreyography,” in which he candidly detailed the child sexual abuse he said he suffered at the hands of numerous Hollywood insiders, but Walters told him, “You’re hurting an entire industry.”

“It was like a knife to the heart,” Feldman told Entertainment Weekly in an interview Thursday. “I was shocked that someone I admired so much and looked up to so much could be so tone deaf and so completely wrong.”

His comments come just weeks after Investigation Discovery’s documentary series “Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” aired, which accused several Nickelodeon staffers of sexually abusing minors. Feldman, himself a former child star, has been speaking out on the 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 also told the Guardian in 2020 that “the biggest problem in Hollywood is pedophilia.”

He didn’t mince words about it on “The View” in 2013.

“I’m saying there are people … who did this to Corey and me, who are still working, who are still at large, and who are some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the industry,” he told Walters. “And they don’t want me to say what I’m saying right now.”

When he repeated his accusations, Walters accused him of “harming” the industry.

“I never got an apology,” he said Thursday of Walters, who died at age 93 in 2022. “The only apology I got was from a few followers on Twitter who said, ‘We all want to apologize on her behalf for the fact that she never acknowledged you or apologized to you.’”

Feldman told Walters after his comment at the time that child sexual abuse in Hollywood was “a very important and serious issue.” Social media users have increasingly agreed with that assertion, especially after the revelations about financier Jeffrey Epstein became public and reinforced that idea.

“It made everyone, I think, feel like she was part of it or covering it up,” Feldman told Entertainment Weekly of Walters so readily dismissing his accusations, “which is shocking and scary.”

Epstein, a billionaire who has hobnobbed with Prince Andrew and several former U.S. presidents, was arrested in 2019 on child sex trafficking charges and killed himself the following month at age 66 while in prison. Walters’ name appears in Epstein’s “little black notebook,” which lists high-level contacts.

Although he previously named Jon Grissom as one of his attackers, Feldman has yet to identify the other people he claims to know.

Feldman, who previously named Jon Grissom as one of his attackers, said Thursday that while “Quiet on Set” gives him hope, people seem to continue to ignore his story.

“Honestly, no one in Hollywood really supported me during that time, and it was really hard, but you never know,” he told EW. “The tide seems to be turning, and the tide seems to be turning. And I hope that one day someone cares enough.”

Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Online Sexual Assault Helpline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center Website.

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