Celebrity News December 19, 2014
Video: Katie Couric Asks Stephen Collins If He's a Pedophile
Katie Couric didn't pull any punches in her exclusive interview with Stephen Collins for Yahoo! and “20/20.”
When she asked him point blank if he was a pedophile, he said he didn't fit the “clinical or dictionary definition.”
“I am not,” he said. “A pedophile is someone who is mainly or wholly attracted to children. I'm not.”
Collins previously admitted in a People magazine essay that he had sexual contact with three underage girls between 1973 and 1994, but claimed a therapist assured him he was not a pedophile.
He told Couric, “I had a distortion in my thinking where I acted out in those ways. But I am absolutely not attracted, physically or sexually attracted, to children.”
The “7th Heaven” star called the incidents "terrible and I regret them deeply… I don't look at young women that way. I don't and I never did… It was not a desire to be in sexual contact with them.”
When Couric brought up a leaked email written by his estranged wife Faye Grant that claimed he was attracted to young boys, Collins said, “It's something that she made up. She wanted to put it out there. It, too, leaves me speechless.”
