Corey Feldman sat down with Matt Lauer for his first TV interview since announcing a $10 million fundraising campaign to finance a film that would expose an alleged “pedophile ring” in Hollywood.
During his Today show interview on Monday, October 30, Feldman defended his decision to wait to give names of the alleged harassers saying: “I need a team of lawyers and I need a team of security to be around me at all times to keep me safe so I can get this message done.”
“I vow that I will release every single name that I have knowledge of, period. And nobody’s going to stop this,” he added about his “truth campaign.”
When asked why he needs $10 million dollars, the 46-year-old actor told Lauer that the project isn’t a documentary but a “feature film,” and he needs the money to pay actors, attorneys and to make it a “theatrical release.”
Feldman also claims he’s received death threats and went to the police but no action has been taken to protect him, adding to the reason he won’t yet release names. “There is a statute of limitations in the state of California,” he said. “It’s that way only where the movie industry, conveniently enough, is in California … if I went to the police, I would be the one getting sued.”
As previously reported, the late Corey Haim’s mother recently spoke to The Hollywood Reporter and said she believes the Goonies star is a “scam artist.”
“He’s been talking about revealing the names of his and other abusers for seven years since my son died,” she said in the story published on Saturday, October 28. “Now he wants $10 million to do it? Come on. It’s a long con. He’s a scam artist. If he was serious about this, he’d share the information he has with the police.”
Haim’s opposition comes after Feldman said in his 2013 memoir Coreyography that her son, who died in 2010, was one of the victims of sex abuse in the industry.
According to Feldman, the late Lost Boys star, who died at 38 of pneumonia, was abused by multiple people when he was a child actor in the 1980s. Haim’s mom, on the other hand, has said she believes it was a single incident of molestation by one person and that she doesn’t think a “pedophilic ring” exists in the industry.
Feldman took to Twitter to defend himself and insisted he’s not doing it for the money: “U GUYS KNOW I DONT EVER SAY ANYTHING BAD ABOUT ANY1, BUT JUDY HAIM (no longer her last name) IS A BAD WOMAN WHO VEHEMENTLY PROTECTS EVIL!”
“SHE HAS BEEN CRE8ING DISTRACTIONS & DIVERSIONS SINCE HER SONS DEATH, 2 SHUN AWAY THE FEELINGS OF TRUE GUILT SHE MUST BARE! #BLASPHEMY,” he continued. “BUT U WILL C THE DARK SOULS CLAMMERING 2 SILENCE & DISCREDIT ME. ONLY GOD CAN SHOW U IN UR HEARTS WHAT THE TRUTH IS! NOT ABOUT $, NEVER WAS!”
The former child star has been in the news recently, first after speaking out against sexual abusers in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal, and second when he was picked up by police in Louisiana for marijuana possession on October 21, later tweeting that he found the timing of his legal trouble “ironic.”
As of Monday, October 30, his campaign has raised more than $160,684.
