Hollywood's dirty little secret: Child sexual abuse
Fox News highlights the fact that in recent weeks, three separate child sex abuse cases in Hollywood have come to light and that this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the sexual exploitation of children in Tinseltown:
Revelations of this sort come as no surprise to former child star Corey Feldman.
Feldman, 40, himself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, unflinchingly warned of the world of pedophiles who are drawn to the entertainment industry last August. "I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia," Feldman told ABC's Nightline. "That's the biggest problem for children in this industry... It's the big secret."
Another child star from an earlier era agrees that Hollywood has long had a problem with pedophilia. "When I watched that interview, a whole series of names and faces from my history went zooming through my head," Paul Peterson, 66, star of The Donna Reed Show, a sitcom popular in the 1950s and 60s, and president of A Minor Consideration, tells FOXNews.com. "Some of these people, who I know very well, are still in the game."
"This has been going on for a very long time," concurs former "Little House on the Prairie" star Alison Arngrim. "It was the gossip back in the '80s. People said, 'Oh yeah, the Coreys, everyone's had them.' People talked about it like it was not a big deal."
Arngrim, 49, was referring to Feldman and his co-star in "The Lost Boys," Corey Haim, who died in March 2010 after years of drug abuse.
"I literally heard that they were 'passed around,'" Arngrim said. "The word was that they were given drugs and being used for sex. It was awful - these were kids, they weren't 18 yet. There were all sorts of stories about everyone from their, quote, 'set guardians' on down that these two had been sexually abused and were totally being corrupted in every possible way."
So why doesn't someone do anything about it? Parents? Guardians? Studios?
It's all about the green:
Arngrim, a board member and the national spokeswoman for protect.org, an organization that works to protect children from physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, says greed in Hollywood allows sexual predators to flourish. "Nobody wants to stop the gravy train," says Arngrim. "If a child actor is being sexually abused by someone on the show, is the family, agents or managers - the people who are getting money out of this - going to say, 'OK, let's press charges'? No, because it's going to bring the whole show to a grinding halt, and stop all the checks. So, the pressure is there is not to say anything."
While no doubt money is at the root of the silence, as we saw with the Roman Polanski child sex case, there is also a question of liberals believing that if the "artist" in question is considered "brilliant," any behavior can be excused in deference to the pedophile's talent.
This is a horrific story that could very well change the face of Hollywood if investigations ever get off the ground. This is not likely as long as the veneer of normalcy and huge profits from filmmaking continue to be pushed by the Dream Merchants in Hollywood.