Image Source: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
What was the Accusation?
Actor Stephen Collins, best known for playing minister and father Eric Camden on the television series 7th Heaven, faced public scrutiny in 2014 after an audio recording from a confidential marriage-therapy session became public. The recording was made during a January 2012 session attended by Collins and his then-wife, Faye Grant. After excerpts were released publicly in October 2014, law-enforcement agencies reviewed allegations that Collins had engaged in sexual misconduct involving underage girls. Two months later, Collins addressed the controversy directly in a lengthy statement to People, acknowledging inappropriate sexual conduct involving three female minors in incidents spanning from 1973 to 1994.
Collins said the first incident occurred in 1973, when he was 25. According to his account, he exposed himself on two occasions to a preteen girl and later, while the two were watching television alone, moved her hand in a way that caused her to touch him sexually. Collins said he had no further physical contact with her. He also acknowledged separate incidents involving two teenage girls in 1982 and 1994 in which he exposed himself but said there was no physical contact. In a subsequent interview with Katie Couric, Collins discussed the three incidents publicly and said the girls had been approximately 10, 13, and 14 years old when the conduct occurred.
Collins expressed remorse and described his actions as wrong and inexcusable. He said he had undergone extensive therapy and asserted that he had not experienced an impulse to repeat the behavior since the final incident in 1994. Collins also said he had apologized directly to one of the women approximately 15 years after the incident involving her. He explained that he had not approached the other two because treatment had led him to believe that contacting them could reopen old wounds. At the same time, portions of his response attempted to limit what he regarded as inaccurate assumptions arising from the leaked therapy recording. During his interview with Couric, he rejected the characterization that he was a pedophile and said he was not physically or sexually attracted to children.
The disclosure produced immediate professional consequences. Collins was removed from the comedy Ted 2, and UP TV removed 7th Heaven reruns from its schedule. Police in New York and California reviewed allegations involving Collins; New York authorities said the allegation they were examining was beyond the applicable statute of limitations. Collins was not criminally charged in connection with the misconduct he publicly acknowledged. His December 2014 statement to People and his televised interview with Couric became the principal public image-repair responses to the controversy.
Key Apologia Strategies:
Mortification, Corrective Action, Minimization, Attacking the Accuser
Video
Transcript
Stephen Collins Statement to People (December 17, 2014) — Excerpts
“Forty years ago, I did something terribly wrong that I deeply regret. I have been working to atone for it ever since. I’ve decided to address these issues publicly because two months ago, various news organizations published a recording made by my then-wife, Faye Grant, during a confidential marriage therapy session in January, 2012. This session was recorded without the therapist’s or my knowledge or consent.”
“On 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.”
“I did have an opportunity to do so with one of the women, 15 years later. I apologized and she was extraordinarily gracious. But after I learned in the course of my treatment that my being direct about such matters could actually make things worse for them by opening old wounds, I have not approached the other two women, one of whom is now in her 50s and the other in her 30s.”
Stephen Collins Interview with Katie Couric (December 19, 2014) — Excerpts
[After being asked if he was a pedophile]: “I do not fit either the clinical or dictionary definition of it. A pedophile is someone who is mainly or wholly attracted to children. I’m not. I had a distortion in my thinking where I acted out in those ways, but I’m absolutely not attracted physically or sexually attracted to children. I’m just not.”
“I remember talking about this once with a therapist and the therapist assuring me these incidents were such that… someone with that attraction would’ve acted many more times. They were terrible, and I regret them deeply, but I don’t look at young women that way. I don’t. And I never did. That may sound incongruous with those actions, but those actions, I think, had more to do with that distortion in my thinking and need for attention — it was not a desire to be in any way in sexual contact with them.
“And that’s why I say in that moment in ’73 when that physical contact took place, it was the end, if there had been anything desirous up until then, that ended it. That stopped it. It was the opposite of excitement or gratification.”
