14 DAY TRIAL // Talk about a well-planned PR move. Earlier this year, the Internet was shocked to find out that everybody’s favorite TV father figure, the actor playing well-spoken pastor on ABC’s “7th Heaven,” was a pedophile who had been acting out on his urges for decades and even used his friendly TV persona to get inside his victims’ houses by tricking their families.
Stephen Collins, for he is the actor we’re talking about, admitted to his wife during a therapy session, which she recorded without his knowledge, to abusing girls as young as 10 years old. When the recording emerged online, all hell broke loose – as it should have.
It’s been months since the scandal broke but Collins is only breaking his silence now – in a statement to People magazine, he finally admits to molesting 3 minor girls but he makes a visible effort to deny that he’s a pedophile.
Collins hires PR crisis manager
Collins most likely hired a PR crisis manager, because he stood to lose his entire career because of the leaked recording, as industry executives did their best to distance themselves from him the moment word of this started spreading online.
Considering the magnitude of the scandal and the terrible, terrible accusations against him, the spreading of the word happened very quickly.
So far, he hasn’t said anything about the accusations, but he did instruct his attorney to issue a few statements to make one thing clear: his admission on the recording should have never been made public and his wife (with whom he’s now in a bitter divorce battle) is despicable for releasing it.
His new PR manager obviously told him that the time has come to be honest about it.
Collins is a pedophile
Collins admits to People magazine that he molested 3 girls between 1973 and 1994 but he doesn’t mention their age. If you want a better appreciation of his crime, here it is: in his confession on the recording, he said they were aged 10 to 13. Children.
But “I have not had an impulse to act out in any such way [in the last 20 years],” Collins says. He admits that his crime was “terribly wrong” and he professes to be torn with regret and guilt, for which he’s been trying to atone for years.
“I’ve decided to address these issues publicly because […o]n the recording, I described events that took place 20, 32, and 40 years ago. The publication of the recording has resulted in assumptions and innuendos about what I did that go far beyond what actually occurred. As difficult as this is, I want people to know the truth,” he says.
He has contacted only one of his victims and she’s been most “gracious” about it, telling him that she forgave him, he continues. He did not try to apologize to the other two and has no plans to do so for the future because, he explains, he’s receiving “treatment” for his condition and he was warned that he might “open old wounds” if he tried to speak with them.
Media exposed him and killed his career, so he’s going to the media for atonement
Collins is no fool: he knows that admitting in public to making these criminal acts will probably not land him in jail because the crimes happened a very long time ago. So, because word of his deeds spread through the media, which, in turn, cost him his career, he’s trying to go to the media to get his life and career back.
This is the first time when an actor / celebrity comes public about being a pedophile, and does so in a statement to a celebrity publication. But Collins has more planned: he will also be doing an interview with Katie Couric which will stream on Yahoo! and will air on ABC, on the 20/20 segment.
Collins is gearing up for what is known in the industry as the “apology tour.” He is definitely hoping he will get sympathy, and this way, convince his peers he’s good to work with again.
Here’s his initial confession, in case you missed it when it leaked online.
