Elijah Wood Speaks Out About Hollywood’s Dark Underbelly Of Paedophilia

Elijah Wood has spoken out about what he says is an endemic of abuse and paedophilia in Hollywood, alleging that child sex abuse is rampant, organised… and protected.

“Clearly something major was going on in Hollywood,” he said, in a new interview with the Sunday Times. “It was all organised. There are a lot of vipers in this industry, people who only have their own interests in mind. There is darkness in the ­underbelly — if you can imagine it, it’s probably happened.

“What upsets me about these situations is that the victims can’t speak as loudly as the people in power. That’s the tragedy of ­attempting to reveal what is happening to innocent people: they can be squashed but their lives have been irreparably damaged.”

Wood – who arrived in Hollywood aged eight – said he was “lucky” to escape his childhood unharmed, a fact that he says essentially comes down to the protection from his mother, Debra.

“She was far more concerned with raising me to be a good human than facilitating my career,” he said. “I never went to parties where that kind of thing was going on. This bizarre industry presents so many paths to temptation. If you don’t have some kind of foundation, typically from family, then it will be difficult to deal with.”

He compared the systematic abuse and subsequent culture of silence as similar to British entertainer Jimmy Savile, against whom accusations of child abuse were only levelled after his death.


“You all grew up with Savile – jesus, it must have been devastating,” he said (the publication is British).
Among the several stories of abuse the Sunday Times documents is Corey Feldmen, one of the biggest child stars of the 80s who later suffered mental health problems, alcoholism, and addiction to crack and heroin.
Corey Feldmen in Stand By Me (1986)
In 2011, Corey said that “the number one problem in Hollywood was and is – and always will be – paedophilia,” and that claiming that his abusers are “still out there and still working – some of the richest, most powerful people in this business.”
The article also throws up some absolutely fucked statistics. Anne Henry, co-founder of child actor protection organisation BizParentz Foundation, reckons that the industry is harbouring around 100 active abusers right now, and that an estimated 75% of child actors who went ‘off the rails’ were abused. 
“Drug addiction, suicide attempts, wandering through life without a purpose – they can all be symptoms,” she says.
Read the full syndicated piece over in The Australian here.
Photo: Getty / Kevin Winter.


To speak to someone about child abuse – either to access trained counsellors, raise concerns about children you know, advice on how to act, or to speak up about past abuse – call the National Child Abuse hotline on 1800 99 10 99.

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