Oprah Winfrey refuses to speak to her 'secret son' after he sold his story to US tabloid

Calvin Mitchell got back in touch with her after Oprah enrolled him in a prestiguous school as a child

Winfrey is a significant influencer in the US and one estimate predicted that her endorsement of Mr Obama between 2006 and 2008 delivered over a million votes in the 2008 Democratic primary race (Getty)

Oprah Winfrey says she will no longer speak to her 'secret son' after he worked with a tabloid to set up a chance encounter with her.

Reports claimed Winfrey was ‘ambushed’ by Calvin Mitchell, who she supported financially when he was a child, as she left the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York earlier this month.

Winfrey was reportedly unable to stay, telling him "Honey, I’m on my way to the United Nations right now, so I can’t talk to you."

After the meeting, she says she got a staff member to swap contact details with the 35-year-old so she could keep in touch with him.

But she later learned Mitchell's appearence at the theatre had been set up by a tabloid. Furthermore, he had sold stories to the press, speaking about how he felt “abandoned” by the TV mogul after dropping out of an expensive boarding school she paid for him to attend.

"I was young, I made a dumb decision, and Oprah wouldn’t forgive me," Mitchell told Radar.

"I’m still empty. I’m still searching. I don’t have closure to this. I just don’t understand."

Winfrey first met Mitchell when she was filming for a TV show in a poor area of Chicago in the 90s. She paid for him to go to private school, which he was expelled from, and later sent him to boarding school, which he left after falling out with staff.

She even gave Mitchell’s mother a job, and when she learned the family were always late because they didn’t know the time, she bought them several clocks and taught them how to set alarms.

Winfrey told Entertainment Tonight she offered him an ultimatum after he revealled he would be dropping out of the second school she had paid him to attend

"'If you leave this school and refuse to get an education — I have tried to offer you an education twice — there isn't another school I can put you in,'" she recalled. "'If you leave this school, I am done. There is nothing else I can do.' ... And that was my last conversation with Calvin in the early 90s."

Winfrey admitted she was "disappointed" he had gone to the press.

"I could see the little boy in his eyes, even though time has changed a lot for him, and I said to him, 'What are you doing? Why did you go to the tabloids?'"

"[But] when I realised the whole thing was a setup, I was no longer interested in speaking to him."

She added that she learned a lot from trying to help Mitchell, and opened up her Leadership Academy for Girls after deciding to help give people the resources to help themselves, something she felt she didn’t do with Mitchell, who she would often give expensive presents to.

"It isn't enough to give a person a new life or money or a new car, you have to teach them how to fish themselves," she said.