When somebody says there is pedophilia in Hollywood, anybody who is paying attention to the world at large knows this is true. Pedophilia is a world wide problem. Actor/musician Corey Feldman is getting people to talk about it, and that is a good thing. Anybody who expects Corey to bring them down is naive. At best, what he can do is start a chain reaction in which other child stars begin to speak up about their own experiences and identify the criminals.
Corey has claimed he knows six names, and he wrote about them in his book. He used fake names. In truth, he's probably aware of more, and it wouldn't be a surprise if there's more to his story than is written in his book. I find it interesting the way he describes Corey Haim's experiences versus how he talks about his own. I don't like being a critic at a time like this. Let me just say, I believe it has happened to him. I have a feeling his story is worse than he lets on here. However, I don't think we're going to get more out of him than what he is hinting at now, and that's totally up to him.
The reality is, the two names he has dropped, Jon Grissom and Marty Weiss, are both already known as pedophiles. They have gone through the court system, and frankly, they got off lightly. At best, we now know, according to Feldman, that they did things to him too. There's another name we are waiting to hear from him. He calls him Ralph Kaufman, and he also names his father, Bob Kaufman. Corey claims Bob was really Ralph's gay lover. Bob was in casting and helped get him some of his early roles, and Ralph was the one who had the Soda Pop Club parties in Hollywood in the 1980's.
I don't know how far back Bob and Ralph go, but it's just possible Bob groomed Ralph when he was a minor and Ralph became a pedophile himself. Sadly, this is known to happen. Ralph, though in his 20's during the time of the parties, had a youthful appearance. He would be a prime candidate in a pedophile ring to gain the trust of the kids and lure them to the late night parties. Ralph is not known as a big Hollywood name, but if he's connected to a pedo ring, he is an important name. At this point, we are waiting for Corey to reveal who Ralph really is, but others have used his clues to identify him as Alphy Hoffman. Corey's retweets of certain posts would suggest those people are on the right track.
I don't think Corey is going any further than naming this person and possibly the identity of Tony Burnham. For one thing, he's said he won't name anybody he doesn't have first hand knowledge of. This means the name of the person who supposedly molested Corey Haim on the set of Lucas is not likely to be named, although Feldman mentions in his book that the incident happened. This was before he and Haim started hanging out, and it's obvious that it had a big impact on Haim. Feldman claims Haim started telling him about it early on, but years later, both of them started dealing with the pain of it all through their drug abuse. Haim is said to have never won that battle.
Where it gets contentious is Carey's mother, Judy Haim. She would prefer Feldman not include her son in any of his own crusade, and she is particularly troubled by his Ideiegogo campaign to raise $10,000,000 to make a movie based on his autobiography. She believes, as others have said, that he should name names and do the right thing without a price tag. She has said what he is doing is a scam. Feldman insists he's raising money not just for the movie that will name the names of these abusers, but legal defense and security for the danger he is putting himself and his family in.
Who is right? Corey's first two names wouldn't seem to be a danger to him. Based on hints, the biggest name he's holding on to that he would even dare name is the identity of Kaufman. He has no proof of who the person was on the set of Lucas, although theories have ranged from a producer still in the business today to a co star who is still involved in successful projects. This is another problem. Because Corey is only dropping clues, internet sleuths are coming up with theories that name other big names, and they have no proof other than Corey's clues. Is it fair to those people to allow this to continue without some real evidence?
Judy Haim was recently on the Canadian version of ET. She made it clear that if Feldman is going to name names, she is all for it. Tell the truth and protect innocent lives. She also claims that what happened to her son was only a one time incident. I have many theories on that. I don't believe it was only a one time thing, but I can also believe that he may have only told Judy about the one time. If that is true, however, it would suggest that she knows this abuser's name. If so, why is she silent? See what I mean about speculation? What do we really know?
What is disturbing are passages in Corey Feldman's book and how he portrays Haim and additional encounters Haim had with older men. Feldman describes them as if Haim is asking for them and insinuates that Haim is gay. I'm not passing a judgement, because I don't think you are bad if you are gay. Haim hadn't fully processed what happened to him. However, it's described as if Haim was asking for these things to happen, which is also a defense some of these pedos use when they are finally caught.
This is from the end of Chapter 12 of Choreography regarding Haim's experience with Marty Weiss and how Feldman helped make it happen. Haim is depicted as asking Feldman to set him up with somebody for a sexual encounter.
Feldman replies: “Corey, we’re in Santa Cruz. I don’t know anyone here.”
“What about that girl your mom hangs out with? The Asian girl?”
“I guess you can call her…?”
“Can you call her for me?”
I set down the picture of my girlfriend, Katie, and sighed. “I really don’t know her that well.”
“Come on, man. I just need somebody to take care of me.”
And then suddenly I remembered a story, something Jason Presson had told me about Marty, a month or so before I left town. Jason had spent the night at Marty’s house; Marty was living, at the time, with his parents and his brothers and sister. At same point during the overnight, Marty had admitted to Jason that he was gay.
I’m not sure what made me think of that, or what made me say what I said next. It just sort of slipped out—it wasn’t something I thought about, it wasn’t something I meant to be in any way taken seriously. It was just a flip comment, a weak attempt at a joke.
“Marty’s gay,” I said. “Why don’t you ask him?”
Haim looked over at Marty, sitting sheepishly in a chair in the corner. “Is that true, man? Are you gay?”
Marty was clearly flustered by this; he sat up a little, wiped his palms on his pants. “Well, uh, I mean … I don’t know about gay. I don’t really like to talk about it. I mean, I like boys as much as I like girls, but I don’t know if you’d call that gay.…”
“Well, if you’re gay,” Corey said, not missing a beat, “then why don’t you take care of me?”
They walked single file into the adjoining room the room that had originally been intended for my mother. I heard sounds, banging, thumping. I felt my stomach flip-flop. I felt sick.
This sounds an awful lot like gay, consensual sex, doesn't it? For one, we don't know if this happened. Secondly, we don't know if it happened as Feldman described, if it did happen. Third, if it did happen, Haim had clearly not processed what had happened to him on the set of Lucas, and once he did start dealing with it, it was a down hill spiral for him. Judy Haim has threatened to sue Feldman over his continuing comments regarding her son.
I'll just put this out here for consideration without an opinion. If you've seen the documentary An Open Secret, you will hear a story about one boy's encounters with Weiss. He eventually recorded a conversation, which led to Weiss being convicted. Feldman claimed he named names, which appears to be the case, to police officers investigating Michael Jackson in 1993. Obviously, he was ready to talk then, but those particular officers didn't listen. Why didn't he make a more serious effort to talk back then? What might have happened to the boy interviewed in An Open Secret if Feldman had spoken up then when he was clearly ready to?
In Chapter 13, Feldman described how Haim was hitting on him again. Feldman set him up again, this time with another older man.
I went to the fridge to get myself a soda. “That’s great, man. I don’t need to see your dick.”
“I’m just showing you because this is how frustrated I am right now. I just want to get laid. Is that really such a bad thing? Is that really such a big deal?”
Before I even realized what was happening, he started in with, “Hey, why don’t we just mess around, why don’t we just touch each other?” I was used to his persistence; I was not accustomed to being hit on myself. I said no, I scooted farther away from him on the couch, I repeated that it wasn’t “my thing” until finally, exasperated, I said, “Corey, are you gay?”
“I’m not gay, man. This is just what guys do. It’s totally normal. Why don’t we just do it?”
I yelled. We nearly came to blows. I smoked some weed of my father’s, tried to settle myself down.
“Okay,” he said after a long silence. “What about that one guy, Marty Weiss?”
I glared at Haim. “I’m not talking to him anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because he started a company with my mom, and my mom and I aren’t really talking, and I think what happened in Santa Cruz was really fucked up and I just don’t want to be responsible for that again.”
“Okay. Don’t you know anyone else?”
Actually, I did know someone. Every time I had seen Tony Burnham at one of Ralph’s parties, he would be on and on about Corey Haim, about how good-looking Haim was and how much he wanted to meet him. At that moment, I wasn’t thinking about the fact that Tony was an adult and Haim was a minor; I was thinking that I would do just about anything to get Haim to shut up, to stop him from hitting on me.
“Okay, who is this guy?” Haim asked.
“His name is Tony. He’s older, and he’s kinda fat. He’s really not at all attractive.”
“Have him come over.”
“Are you serious?”
Haim raised his eyebrows and gave me a frustrated nod.
“Look, I don’t feel comfortable with this,” I told him. “Why can’t you just go out and get yourself laid like everyone else?”
“Just call him up, man. Just please do me a favor and call him.”
Whatever happened between Tony and Haim that day, I cannot tell you—they went off to the laundry room in my father’s building. Next thing you know, Tony was always at Haim’s side, driving Haim around town, hanging out with Haim’s mother, passing himself off as a friendly big-brother type. Looking back, I think Tony must have thought of Haim as his boyfriend. I think he believed they were having a real relationship. I didn’t understand that what he was doing was wrong, or what it would eventually do to Corey Haim. I just thought that if Haim seemed to be okay with it, I should learn to be ok with it, too.
Feldman even rationalizes this. He's not setting him up to facilitate pedophilia, he's doing it to get Haim out of his face. It's hard to defend Feldman at this point, because this looks bad. I have to remind myself that he was a victim of these predators too, and it probably goes back further than Feldman himself admits in his book. Tony Burnham has been identified by internet sleuths, but I won't put the name here. You can easily do a web search. It's possible Feldman will name him, and he would be a reason Feldman would need lawyers. Burnham still has a career, according to reports I've seen.
In Chapter 19, Feldman admitted that Burnham was a man he maintained a friendship with, and Haim was not happy about it. In the TV show The Two Coreys, Haim speaks in code about a time in which he was raped. It could be Burnham he was talking about.
I moved to Encino, and Tony became my roommate. Haim took this as a kind of betrayal. Looking back on it now, who can blame him?
Whether it was denial, or the fucked up way your brain works when you’ve been a victim yourself, I just didn’t think of Tony as a bad guy. I still thought, erroneously and ridiculously, that because Haim “wanted it,” the abuse had not been Tony’s fault. While Haim tolerated the arrangement and the two remained civil—Tony even scored a small role in one of our upcoming movies—it was clear to me that Haim could no longer stand him.
If these particular passages don't make you pause and think, you might need to read them again and absorb what Corey is saying. I don't claim to know all of the ways in which a victim of this abuse will react and rationalize things. Reading Corey's words, it sounds like he just thought Haim was gay and wanted this. I do question, given the fact that he claims to be Haim's friend, why he would depict it the way he has in his book. Should he have said anything at all? Might he have been better served to describe things differently?
Corey claims he actually named their names in the book before the publisher stepped in and told him that he couldn't do it for legal reasons. Who knows if there are other names and passages that were removed entirely for that very reason? If we focus on what's here, did he have to tell Haim's story in the manner in which he did? I'm not claiming to know the law, but it sounds like if Weiss or Burnham were ever brought to justice over this, they could indicate that Feldman set them up with Haim knowing that they would have sex.
I don't know what the laws would be regarding Feldman here, or if he might be classified as a victim too. He has claimed that Weiss molested him. Certainly, his words serve as his excuse for why he did what he did, how he rationalized his actions. It's important to know that Feldman says he never witnessed any of these things, but in some of it, there's every indication that he knew what was happening. It's because of these passages that some people are blaming Feldman for some of what happened to Haim. Of course, their theories go into darker and unproven areas. We don't know, and we may never know. We only have his words to go on at the moment.
I'm not putting this out here to make Feldman the bad guy. He's been victimized too. People are counting on him to be the hero who brings some of the truth out. He may give us some names that we haven't already heard were sentenced for sexual crimes against minors, and that would be good to know. He may get others to talk and bring about the change in Hollywood we'd like to see, and that would be even better news. He may not give us anything significant in the end
Pedophilia is a bad thing for so many reasons. The victim is left with scars that never heal. They wonder if they deserved it. The predator can do such a good job of getting inside the victim's mind, that they wonder if they asked for it. When it's a boy being preyed upon by a man, they may wonder if they are gay. Left alone and allowed to grow up as a normal child, gay may never have entered the picture. It was forced upon them, and frequently, the predator will even rationalize that the victim asked for it. Feldman's stories about Haim, if they are to be believed, paint a picture that Haim was asking for it, but it's not as simple as that.
I would caution people to not ridicule Feldman for how he is going about this, but also, don't make him the leader of some movement to expose Hollywood pedophilia. Encourage him to name names and tell the truth, but understand that he was a victim too. Though he's overcome some of those demons that claimed his friend's life, he still battles them too. I hope he tells us at least the names he's hinted at telling us, and others come forward with their stories too. Things like this should never happen to any child.
