Former 7th Heaven star Stephen Collins, who recently admitted to and expressed remorse over past inappropriate sexual conduct with three underage girls, says he is not a pedophile, nor is he "attracted, physically or sexually attracted to children."
The 67-year-old actor, who played Reverend Eric Camden on the hit family series, which aired for 11 seasons, made his comments in an interview with Yahoo! Global News Anchor Katie Couric that is set to air in full on ABC's 20/20 show on Friday at 10 p.m. ET. He also said that he had had physical contact with one of the girls and exposed himself to the other others, adding that he had suffered "exhibitionist urges," which he no longer has.
The first segment was released online on Thursday and a second excerpt was posted on Friday morning. In the new video, the veteran newswoman asked him, bluntly, "Are you a pedophile?"
"I am not, I do not fit the either clinical or dictionary definition of it," he says. "A pedophile is someone who is mainly or wholly attracted to children. I'm not."
According to the World Health Organization, a pedophile has "a sexual preference for children, boys or girls or both, usually of pre-pubertal or early pubertal age." Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines one as "a person who has a sexual interest in children."
"I had a distortion in my thinking that, where I acted out in those ways," Collins continued. "But I'm absolutely not attracted, physically or sexually attracted to children. I'm just not."
"And you're saying you never were," Couric said.
"No, I wasn't," Collins replied. "You know, I, I remember talking about this once with a therapist and the therapist saying, assuring me that this, these incidents were such that if...someone with that attraction would have acted many more times, many more. They were, they were terrible and I regret them deeply, but I was not looking…I don't, I don't look at young women that way. I don't and I never did."
"That may sound incongruous with those actions, but, but those actions, I think, had more to do with that kind of distortion in my thinking and need for attention," he said. "It was not a desire to…to be, in any way, in sexual contact with them."
Earlier this week, the actor released a statement to People magazine in which he admitted to past inappropriate sexual conduct with three underage girls between 1973 and 1994, following news of two child molestation investigations in New York and in Los Angeles, which came amid reports and a more than two-year-long divorce battle. No criminal charges have been filed against Collins. In his statement, he had said he deeply regrets the incidents and has been "working to atone for it ever since."
"And that's why I say, that moment in '73, when the physical contact took place, it was like the end," Collins told Couric. "If there had been anything desirous up till then, that ended it, that stopped it, is the opposite of, of excitement and gratification."
His career been impacted from the scandal; UP TV yanked 7th Heaven reruns from its schedule, the actor was cut from the movie Ted 2 and he also resigned from the board of actors' union SAG-AFTRA.
Couric also asks Collins if he was ever attracted to "young boys," citing a report that said he had "made a highly inappropriate comment" to his now-estranged wife, Faye Grant, while she was pregnant. The two have one child, daughter Kate, who is 25.
"No, the answer is no," Collins said. "That was reported, apparently from an email that she sent to me."
"There was no email exchange," he added. "It too leaves me speechless."
In October, TMZ reported that Faye had written an email to Collins in which she claimed he had expressed hope that their child would not be a boy because he "just didn't know" if he could refrain from having oral sex with him.
Couric also asked Collins how he could describe his pathology.
"You know, I don't, uh, I think I'm someone who, uh, gave in several times to exhibitionistic urges, someone who had real, big boundary issues as a young man and as a, and beyond that, to an extent," he replied.
The actor filed for divorce from Grant in 2012 after 27 years of marriage. At the time, she told E! News she was "devastated." In a related document, his wife said that Collins' therapist had told her that the actor had admitted to sexually molesting three underage girls more than a decade earlier and that the counselor had also explained that he has "narcissistic personality disorder with sociopathic tendencies."
"Um, I have, I would be very curious to know where she got that diagnosis—I think it's hers," he told Couric, when asked about it.
"I will say I talked to my own therapist about that, and, and he, he said, 'There isn't anyone who isn't somewhat successful in show business who doesn't have some narcissism. You do not suffer from narcissistic disorder,'" Collins added.