Stephen Collins says older woman exposed herself to him when he was young

Nov. 9, 2008. Stephen Collins arrives at the premiere of "Defiance," during AFI Fest, in Los Angeles. (The Associated Press)

Stephen Collins says his past sexual misconduct with underage girls may have stemmed from his own childhood trauma.

“I did have someone in my life when I was between the ages of about 10 and 15, an older woman, who repeatedly exposed herself to me,” the embattled “7th Heaven” star told Katie Couric in an interview on “20/20″ Friday night. “And I think that distorted my perception in such a way that some part of me thought … I got the equation of, ‘Well, this isn’t so terrible. This person who I trust is doing it.'”

Collins, 67, says the woman’s conduct is “not why” he behaved inappropriately with children between 1973 and 1994, but “it’s the thing that makes the most sense to me” when answering the question of “Why?”

“There was a power that she had over me that was intense. … It’s also about a very distorted form of approval,” he continued, adding that the woman was in various states of undress or completely undressed “quite a few times.”

The first girl Collins had sexual contact with was just 10 years old and took place over the course of about one year.

‘In 1973 there were two occasions when I exposed myself to this young woman and several months later she came to visit and stay with my first wife and me.  My wife had gone to sleep and she and I were watching TV alone together and I took her hand and moved it in such a way that she was touching me inappropriately. Neither of us moved. I knew immediately at that moment, I knew that something unthinkably wrong had just happened that I couldn’t take back and I think we both just sat there. We really didn’t move a muscle and after about 45 seconds I took her hand and moved it back. I waited a couple minutes because I didn’t know what to do or say and then i got up and left the room and I never had any physical contact with her of any inappropriate kind after that. That was the only physical contact I have ever actually had with any minor.’

Collins said the moment was a combination of “poor impulse control, 25-year-old arrogance, really lousy judgement, an outsized need for attention the effects of some distorted thinking that I had sexually due to the things that have happened to me in my childhood.”

In 1982 and 1994 he exposed himself twice to 13- and 14-year-old girls.  “I did not know either of them really well but they were not strangers,” he confessed. In 1982 when he saw the teen’s face which he described as “disoriented” and “frightened” he quickly covered up.

Collins also claims that after 1994 any inappropriate behavior with underage girls had ceased and in 1996 he joined the cast of “7th Heaven” as a Reverend and the father of seven children.

When Couric asked if there was anything he would like to say to fans who felt that the show had been ruined by the revelations Collins replied, “I would say I’m very sorry that anything that I did disappoints you that way, but I would hope that you could know and see ‘7th Heaven’ as a time that is completely carved away from all of these incidents.”

He also revealed that is still in therapy and will remain so out of “respect those girls.” He got teary eyed as he tried to apologize to them, promising that nothing like it would ever happen again.

Click here to read more in The New York Post.