In a statement released to People today, Seventh Heaven star Stephen Collins has formally acknowledged committing several acts of child molestation. "Forty years ago, I did something terribly wrong that I deeply regret," he wrote. "I have been working to atone for it ever since."
Collins' history of child molestation originally came to light in October, when TMZ published a secretly recorded tape on which Collins admitted to the acts during therapy sessions with his estranged wife, Faye Grant. On the tape, Grant says that the victim was 10 years old; Collins replies, "No... she was 11 and then, like, 12 and 13."
In the new statement, Collins says that the incidents "took place 20, 32, and 40 years ago," and says that he has had "no impulse to act out in any such way" since then. "The publication of the recording has resulted in assumptions and innuendos about what I did that go far beyond what actually occurred," he says. "As difficult as this is, I want people to know the truth."
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