Elijah Wood: I have no 'first hand experience or observation' of Hollywood's child sex abuse

Elijah Wood has said he has no first-hand experience or exposure to child sex abuse in Hollywood.

In the past few days, the 35-year-old actor has dominated headlines for claiming Hollywood is in the grip of a child sex abuse scandal comparable to that of Jimmy Savile in Britain.

“You all grew up with Savile - Jesus, it must have been devastating,” he told The Sunday Times. “Clearly something major was going on in Hollywood. It was all organised”.

“There are a lot of vipers in this industry, people who only have their own interests in mind. There is a darkness in the underbelly – if you can imagine it, it’s probably happened.”

But on Monday, Wood posted a statement on Twitter saying his interview had triggered a number of inaccurate and deceptive headlines.

“The Sunday Times interviewed me about my latest film, but the story became about something else entirely,” Wood explained.

“It prompted a number of false and misleading headlines. I had just seen a powerful documentary and I briefly spoke with the reporter about the subject, which had consequences I did not intend or expect. Lesson learned.”

Wood said child abuse was a key issue which needs to be comprehensively investigated but he had no personal exposure to the problem.

“Let me be clear: This subject of child abuse is an important one that should be discussed and properly investigated,” he maintained.

“But as I made absolutely clear to the writer, I have no firsthand experience or observation of the topic, so I cannot speak with any authority beyond articles I have read and films I have seen”.

In the initial interview, Wood explained his mother protected him from abuse when he first arrived in Hollywood aged eight and he didn’t go to the kind of parties where such abuse may have gone on.

The article quoted Anne Henry, the co-founder of Bizparents, an organisation set up to support families of children working in the entertainment industry. She claimed Hollywood was currently sheltering “100 active abusers” and a “tsunami” of claims was emerging.

A representative for Wood, The Sunday Times, and the journalist who wrote the initial interview, Oliver Thring, did not immediately respond to request for comment.