See Also: Church, The Catholic.
Just to be sure, is it Martin Sheen being suggested?
It doesn’t take a Watergate style conspiracy especially in cities like New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles. All people have to do is not pay attention and never connect the dots. We are also not talking about pre-teens in general. While still really bad, it isn’t the same as prepubescent kids IMO.
I have never been molested by anyone but I have a little experience with this type of power play. I was barely 19 when I applied for a catering job at a very notable hotel in New Orleans. The pay was a lot especially for a young college student but I was so naive that I didn’t even think anything of it when my “interview” simply consisted of me walking around and posing in a grandiose ballroom with my future boss directing my moves. I was hired and was forced to call him “Uncle Brian” from then on because he would take care of me. He did and I got great gigs, lots of money and countless nights on the town for free every night after work. His friends became mine and they were some very notable people because he knew everyone including celebrities.
Two of his friends were the highest paid New Orleans newscaster at the time and a very in the closet Army Colonel. They introduced me to celebrities, took me to every bar and restaurant in town and treated me like a true friend. I thought it was great because I was just a broke college student.
They also hit on me all the time which was slow to sink in because none of them seemed outwardly gay. In fact, they were very hostile to outwardly gay men or “Nancy boys” as they called them. I thought it was a joke when they would rub my thigh under the table but it turns out it wasn’t.
The news anchor was busted 5 years later for drugging and having sex with a 15 year old boy and about 20 others. His network was disgraced over it and I was appalled. My former boss and the rest of their friends victimized so many young men that I doubt that the real number will ever be known. Most of the perpetrators are dead now because of suicide or because of the extreme lifestyle they were hiding.
They were running an underage male sex ring the whole time. For some reason, they never did anything bad to me. I might have been just a straight cover for what they really wanted but I thought that I knew them personally and just laughed off all the blatant propositions as jokes. That type of thing can exist right before your eyes and you don’t even know what you are dealing with.
Right, but the Church is an entity in a way the film industry is not.
I’m about a third of the way through An Open Secret, the docu that got Elijah Wood so shook up. So far, it’s mostly talking about casting agents and publicists: people who spend a lot of one-on-one time with actors. That, I can believe. What’s been described so far is the classic grooming scenario that also happens in kids’ sports, youth groups, and Neverland Ranch. It’s not what Feldman seemed to be alluding to: that it happens on every show, at every studio, that everyone from the top echelon on down is either actively involved or at least complicit, and that every parent who takes their kid to a casting call has to resign themselves to this.
Shagnasty beat me to it by saying “not pay attention and never connect the dots”. I can see this one scumbag of a casting agent getting away with it for years, simply because no one thinks about what a casting agent might be doing. I can see sexual abuse being widespread due to no one except the perps knowing the extent of it. But I can’t see it being widespread due to the majority of people knowing and not caring.
(If the rest of the docu proves me wrong, I’ll happily retract this post. Well, not happily, but I’ll retract it.)
Okay, apologies in advance for the double post. I’ve tracked down what seems to be the source of all this. Radar Online, for what that’s worth (they were right about Charlie Sheen being HIV+) claims that an “A-list actor” abused Corey Haim when Haim was 11 years old. That’s not the part I doubt, though I wish I could. What I’m skeptical of is this: “He was the kingpin of a child sex ring that ensnared Haim and Corey Feldman.” Maybe, and maybe not. Maybe that’s what he told a scared 11y/o, to make him think he had no choice. “Everybody does this; if it wasn’t me it’d be someone else.” Doesn’t make it true.
This thing goes on all the time all over and for some reason it flies over oblivious heads. See: Maple Leaf Gardens sex scandal. See: Penn State sex scandal. Where you have young men - MEN, NOT WOMEN, MEN - of course there is the possibility of sex abuse, fondling, raping, sodomy, pimping them out and passing them around. Apparently this is just starting to show up in the public consciousness, ever so slightly. Just because female tits and ass are not involved doesn’t mean it didn’t/isn’t/won’t happen. The idea is so unheard of!.. Some of us laugh at vintage underwear ads on FB with men and boys in matching undies, ‘manly men doing manly things’, throwing a football around or holding a golf club. We are not snickering at the old-fashioned outfits, now we can see there’s a possible sex scandal about to happen right before the oblivious customers’ eyes. I doubt any big names will be named, this kind of thing is so shameful and so covered up, nothing will come of it. It will be buried deep. Just like the news a couple of years ago about director Brian Singer putting his ‘tricks’ into his movies, and all the gossip about naked boy pool parties and worse among the rich and famous. Buried, squelched, people bought off, $$$ paid out.
I dunno, how many people knew Cosby was drugging women? How many just knew he was bedding a lot of them and some of them basically ran away after? How long did Hefner and all his guy friends in Hollywood know this and continue to invite him to parties and even introduce him to young women?
How long did Jimmy Saville get away with molesting kids? How many people around him knew or had strong suspicions about it but continued to work with him and cover it up? What about his attorneys and agents? You think they had zero clue what he was doing and somehow didn’t field any complaints or pay any hush money? Because if they did, and it seems somewhat inconceivable that they didn’t know, those people continued to support his active pediphilic crimes for decades.
The Conspiracy doesn’t have to include hundreds of pedophiles. It only needs to have one, and a horde of willing conspirators who value fame and money over other people.
I’ve only seen people speculate wildly on that without anything even as solid as an Internet rumor. There have been links to Charlie.
Most people here seem to be speculating on the speculation without actually reading any of the articles and cites posted. Feldman was mostly talking publicists and casting agents. The parties that he said were used to groom victims were mostly low level behind the scenes players.
Which one?
Is this the reporter you’re talking about?
Wait-- what did you track down? The original post of this thread?
Yes it is. I didn’t want to mention his name because he is doing much better now. I believe in giving everyone a second chance. Like I said, he was always great to me. I can’t comment on any of his other transgressions and convictions but I am sure they were real based on what I realized in hindsight.
His fall just shows that even well known people can operate in very bad ways in plain sight. I knew him fairly well and never suspected it even though he offered to take me on his private plane to Florida for the weekend because he knew that I liked aviation. I was busy and it was probably for the best. That just shows you how clueless young people can be and how such things can happen.
The Radar Online item that started all this. Every link seems to lead back to that, and Radar Online claims to know who the big big star is who molested Corey Haim, but they won’t say.
Aaaaand on closer inspection I see that you are the OP, and provided that link. Sorry 'bout that!
I’m just sorry you actually had to go investigate this.
Having a network doesn’t mean that they have some sort of secret handshake, just that these people know each other. It also doesn’t mean everybody they know, or everybody who is in a backscratching dynamic with any of them, is part of a pedophiles’ ring, but I have no problem believing that some of the same people who’ll procure drugs or whores will know who happens to prefer them as young as possible.
Okay, I can believe that too. Just that some people, more on other forums than here, were getting so hysterical, speculating about very high-profile, well-respected people, and making it sound like anyone who takes their kid to an audition basically has to sign a contract surrendering the kid’s soul.
And having seen more of that documentary, what they describe does sound plausible. But it also sounds like it’s possible not to get drawn into that web. Mostly by having parents who give a care and don’t let their kids go to parties with all adult men. :eek::smack::mad:
Some of the unsavory details exposed a few years back during the Bryan Singer lawsuit (‘Twink parties’) might lend a little credibility to Feldman’s claims.
Except that credibility vanishes when you realize that not only was Michael Egan’s lawsuit dismissed, he was sentenced to two years imprisonment for fraud, albeit in an unrelated matter.
When the time comes, can the title of this thread be changed from “… about to be revealed?” to “…now revealed!” so I don’t have to keep checking just to find more speculation?
And yes, I’m the kind of guy who will skip to the end of a mystery film or novel if it’s taking too long.