This is really, really messed up. According to the New York Daily News, 7th Heaven star Stephen Collins' newest claim against a released alleged recording of him admitting to sexually molesting three young girls is that the release of the tape has hurt his income, and, in the words of his lawyer, made him "suffer greatly from the pillaring (sic) by the media."
Yeah, so basically, he's seriously defending himself by saying that, because the audio of him allegedly admitting to molesting three children was released, he's having trouble finding work and now has no income. Is this supposed to be a bid for sympathy, because it's the most ridiculous, messed up defense I've heard.
According to TMZ , who received the statement from Collins' lawyer, Mark Vincent Kaplan:
Collins' lawyer says, "Faye's decision to parade that recording ... has resulted in Stephen having no income other than investment income and pension income." [...]
His lawyer, Mark Vincent Kaplan, adds, "Stephen suffers greatly from the pillaring (sic) by the media surrounding Faye's unlawful recording."
Collins' estranged wife Grant, for the record, has denied releasing the recording, saying that she taped it in a therapy session with Collins and a psychiatrist, but turned it over to the police in an attempt to build a case against Collins.
As previously reported, Collins is currently being investigated for the crimes, but may not actually end up being charged due to some awful laws pertaining to statutes of limitations on crimes. Apparently, in the case of the first alleged attack that took place in the state of New York, there would have been no statute of limitations on the crime itself — but the victim, since she was a minor, would have had to come forward "by age 23," according to New York law. For the alleged attack that occurred in California in 1983, their state law would have required the victim to come forward with the crime by the time they were 26 years of age, and that victim is reportedly now 44. Though there is a third victim, she has not come forward with the attack.
The fact that Collins could end up walking away from this without any legal repercussions is horrifying, to say the least — and it's even worse now that he's apparently trying to defend himself by saying he now can't get any work and has no income thanks to the alleged recording's release.
After the alleged recording was posted, Collins was cut from a number of projects including Ted 2 and Scandal, and numerous networks have stopped running 7th Heaven reruns on their line-ups.
