The strange case of 7th Heaven dad Stephen Collins reminds this reporter of a joke at the end of Carl Reiner’s 1983 Steve Martin vehicle The Man With Two Brains. Throughout the picture, Vienna has been plagued by the “elevator killer,” a serial murderer of women; and when at the end of the movie we learn his identity, the elevator killer turns out to be . . . Merv Griffin, a beloved, inoffensive entertainment talk-show host and Eva Gabor armpiece who, of course, has not been seen or mentioned in the movie up until that point. The randomness of the criminal’s identity makes for one of the best gags in eighties comedy, and it’s very much like seeing Collins, who has been making TV and movies for more than 40 years without ever quite getting past the “Hey there’s that guy” level of recognition, break through to the A-list in the worst possible way.
Collins is accused (though not legally) of having molested pre-pubescent girls some decades ago. The evidence against him surfaced on TMZ yesterday in the form of a recording made by his estranged wife when they were doing couples therapy, but apparently the actor has been under investigation by New York police since late 2012. The Los Angeles Police Department also looked into Collins a while back but declined to follow up, and if the timelines being discussed publicly are accurate, it seems likely that the New York statute of limitations will prevent any criminal case from being brought against him. CNN reports that there is corroboration of the audio: A relative of Collins’ first wife reportedly informed police in November 2012 that he sexually assaulted her in his New York apartment when she was 14 years old. He’s already been separated from the cast of Ted 2 and resigned his leadership position with the Screen Actors Guild.
Maybe it does make sense that Collins, who to my eye does not appear to have aged all that much since playing Hugh W. Sloan, Jr. in All the President’s Men in 1976, has been battening Dracula-style on the vitality of the young and innocent. But a few words of caution: Mark Vincent Kaplan, Collins’ high-powered divorce lawyer, says estranged wife Fay Grant has “repeatedly threatened to give this audiotape to the media unless Stephen agreed to pay her millions of dollars more than that to which she was legally entitled.” (Grant denies that she leaked the recording, and apparently she provided it to police in connection with the 2012 investigation. The surreptitious recording of a therapy session by another participant — not by the therapist — does not appear to have violated California law.)
More to the point, confessions made during therapy should probably be given no more practical weight than spitballing during a creative writing workshop. People lie in therapy all the time, not just by omission but also by making up stories. It’s easy enough to imagine situations where the patient (or more precisely, since most therapists are not MDs, the client) is describing fantasies or saying what something feels like rather than recounting what actually happened. Grant herself announces in the audio, “You have to understand I was being shot in the face with a shotgun,” which is presumably a symbolic description of how she felt rather than a literal narrative.
In this case, an actual accuser has come forward, while Collins’ gnat-straining phrases and careful drawing of dubious distinctions do strongly suggest a person painfully coughing up damning information — and as little of it as he can get away with. (If you have the stomach for the audio, “No, I mean, no, partial? I don’t know” and “No. She was eleven, and then like twelve and thirteen” are pretty choice examples of that kind of thing.) If Zeus came down and offered me a million dollars for correctly answering the question, “Did Stephen Collins molest young girls?” I would answer “Yes.”
But that’s not legal proof, nor is the fact that he has not denied the accusations or that he resigned a political post at a union — both of which have been used against him today. Child abuse charges are instant hysteria, and conservatives like Dorothy Rabinowitz have an honorable history of standing up against the hue and cry that breaks out when people are accused. It’s still worth being circumspect when the accused is a liberal actor from Hollyweird. The other big concern being expressed today — that Collins worked on many productions with underage performers — seems like a red herring for pundits who just want to talk about Jessica Biel. Child actors are supervised and tutored even on low-budget productions. In my experience, producers are always asking the writer to produce more pages for the grownups, to avoid the legal constraints and related costs of having kids on set.