It’s been seven years since the world said goodbye to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, who died on June 25, 2009. Former child star Corey Feldman (Stand by Me, Gremlins) once took up for Michael Jackson when he was accused of child molestation back in August 1993 by Jordan Chandler, 13 and his father. Feldman defended Jackson publicly and to investigators in 1993. “He never did anything out of line. I mean anything, you know,” Feldman said in a 1993 audiotape made by authorities. “I mean, the closest he ever came to touching me was maybe slapping me on the leg once.”
When he was subpoenaed to testify in court following the second molestation allegation in 2003, Feldman was interviewed by Martin Bashir on “20/20” and made surprising claims. Although he stressed in his interview that Jackson never molested him or touched him improperly and that there was no sexual contact between them, he claimed he had: “re-evaluated their friendship.”
“I have to say that if my son was 14 years old — 13 years old, and went to a man’s apartment that was 35, and I knew that they were sitting down together talking about this [a coffee-table book filled with naked pictures of grown men and women naked that focused on venereal diseases and the genitalia], I would probably beat his a–.”
In an interview with Dr. Oz that airs on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016, when asked about Michael Jackson’s “lack of humility” and the apology that never happened between the two, Feldman had this to say: “I just think he was so used to people turning on him at the time, that was right as the new allegations had come out for the second batch of all of that … so I think he was just very very paranoid. There was nothing for him to be paranoid about I think he just overreacted with the assumption that I was going to sell him out like everybody else and I tried to assure him I would never do that. Unfortunately, he didn’t believe me at the time and by the time he had figured out that it wasn’t really happening I think he was so embarrassed by what he had done that he knew he would really have to be a man and apologize in that way and call me up and be like, ‘Hey, I’m sorry’ and unfortunately, I don’t think he had that capability. He wasn’t that guy. He didn’t know how to have that kind of humility.”
