Elijah Wood claims Hollywood is 'gripped' by a powerful paedophile ring

Claims: Elijah Wood told The Sunday Times Hollywood is griped by a pedophile ring
REX/Shutterstock
Laura Proto22 May 2016
The Weekender

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Actor Elijah Wood has claimed that Hollywood is in the grip of a child sexual abuse scandal.

The 35-year-old, who played Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings, compared the scandal to that of the case of Jimmy Savile and said the abuse in Los Angeles could still be going on.

Wood told the Sunday Times there were “a lot of vipers in this industry…there is darkness in the underbelly”.

He told the newspaper that his mother had protected him from abuse when he became an actor at the age of eight years old but said other young actors had been “preyed upon”.

He said: “If you’re innocent, you have very little knowledge of the world and you want to succeed.

“People with parasitic interests will see you as their prey. What upsets me about these situations is that the victims can’t speak as loudly as the people in power.”

Anne Henry, co-founder of Bizparents, said the Hollywood industry is “sheltering” abusers and that the “tsunami” of claims were only just beginning.

Corey Feldman, who was a child actor in The Goonies, Gremlins and The Lost Boys, spoke out in 2011 about abuse he suffered during his teenage years.

He said at the age of 14, he was “surrounded” by molesters, adding: “The No 1 problem in Hollywood was and is – and always will be – paedophilia.”

The claims have not been substantiated.

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