Saturday, December 20, 2014
Associated Press
NEW YORK
Embattled actor Stephen Collins says he’s not a pedophile, and insists he has inappropriately touched a minor on only one occasion.
In an interview with Yahoo’s Katie Couric, the “7th Heaven” star described himself instead as someone suffering from “exhibitionist urges” and “big boundary issues.”
Those issues prompted a physical encounter with an underage girl in 1973.
According to Collins, the girl had come to visit and stay with him and his first wife. After his wife had gone to sleep, he and the girl were watching TV together.
“I took her hand and moved it in such a way that she was touching me inappropriately,” he said. “I knew that something unthinkably wrong had just happened that I couldn’t take back.”
He also said he exposed himself to a teenage girl in 1982 and another in 1994.
He said he’s had no such urges since 1994.
Collins, who is being investigated by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department on molestation allegations but has not been charged with any crime, characterized his actions with the girl and the two teens as “terrible, and I regret them deeply,” adding, “I’m absolutely not attracted, physically or sexually attracted, to children. I’m just not.”
In response to Couric’s direct question, Collins said he has never been attracted to young boys.
Collins said he’s been in treatment for 20 years.
In October, TMZ released a 2012 audio recording of Collins purportedly acknowledging molesting underage girls during a marriage-counseling session with his estranged wife, actress Faye Grant.