News that “7th Heaven” actor Stephen Collins is an admitted child molester shocked fans of the actor’s beloved Christian pastor character. The studio making the film sequel “Ted 2” quickly dropped the actor amid lurid details of Collins’ tape-recorded confession, made in secret by his estranged wife during a therapy session two years ago. In the clip, originally published by gossip site TMZ, Collins describes in almost clinically dispassionate detail how he forced a young girl to touch him and exposed himself to others.
“The exposure happened a couple of times,” Collins says, almost casually, as if he is mildly annoyed to be recounting the details for his horrified wife. “There was never any conversation around it. There was one instance … there was one moment of touching where … I put her hand on [his genitals].” The tape includes references to a list of admissions Collins apparently filmed out prior to the therapy session. As you might imagine, he and his wife, Faye Grant, are in the process of a divorce. Police are now investigating Collins to see if charges can be brought. Collins has resigned from the board of the Screen Actors Guild.
What is noteworthy about the case – apart from how thoroughly it underscores the depth and breadth of the child molestation culture in Hollywood – is that Collins’ admissions were made in private during a therapy session with the presumption of confidentiality. Faye Grant chose to record those statements and has used them both to gain leverage in the divorce (one presumes) and to ruin Collins’ life and public image. The case is also strikingly similar, in that regard, to that of Donald Sterling, in which the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers made racist statements in private to his girlfriend. She, in turn, secretly recorded those statements, even prompting him to make more damning declarations, before making the tapes public. The ensuing public relations disaster made Sterling persona non grata in public life and forced him, ultimately, to sell his team.
Then there was the case of Ray Rice, the Baltimore Ravens football player who savagely knocked out his now-wife Janay in an elevator in February. A surveillance camera recorded that incident, but the video did not surface until months later. While Rice was suspended by way of punishment for the incident, the bad publicity generated by public release of the videotape (again by TMZ) generated terrible public outcry. Claiming incompetence, the NFL said it hadn’t actually seen the video before. Ultimately, public pressure led to Rice’s release by the Ravens.
Earlier this year in Texas, a Dr. Ana Gonzalez-Angulo was accused of poisoning Dr. George Blumenschein, a Maryland oncologist. As it turns out, Blumenschein secretly recorded his intimate telephone conversations with lover Gonzalez-Angulo. The affair left Blumenschein with permanent kidney damage. His recordings were played as evidence in Gonzalez-Angulo’s trial for aggravated assault – a trial that ended in a conviction for Gonzalez-Angulo, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Meanwhile, an employee fired by the Federal Reserve secretly recorded 46 hours of conversations between Fed officials and Goldman Sachs. The employee was assigned to regulate Goldman Sachs and claims the Fed refused to stand up to the powerful bank. She is suing the Fed for wrongful termination, saying she was let go when she highlighted problems with Goldman Sachs’ alleged conflicts of interest. The audio recordings she made are being called the “Ray Rice video for the financial sector.” It remains to be seen how damning they might be. The Fed, for its part, claims the employee was let go on “performance grounds.” The tapes may show otherwise.
In Canada, a man named Jeffrey Nuyens has pleaded guilty to “voyeurism.” Nuyens apparently placed a hidden camera in his bathroom and bedroom and made secret recordings of friends and visitors to the home. He claims he has not put these videos on the Internet, but one never knows. He is not alone. In Massachusetts, a New Hampshire man placed a hidden camera in a flower basket in the bathroom. He has been detained without bail on charges of violating the state’s “upskirting” law.
In the U.K., the deputy head of a school in Southend, Essex, killed himself amidst allegations that he secretly filmed students undressing in the private school’s changing rooms. And in Canada, a man got 85 days of weekends in jail – allowing him, at least, to keep his job – after he secretly recorded his own blindfolded wife while the two had sex. The suspicious wife first found the camera, then found child pornography on her husband’s computer. And in the Buffalo area just this month, an Amherst man and member of the Indian-American community there used a hidden camera to spy on girls in the changing room of a Hindu temple where he volunteered. He is currently free on $50,000 bail.
It should be obvious to all of us by now that recording devices – small, high-resolution, affordable units produced in multiple form factors – are readily available to everyone. And while we are more aware than ever of things like “sexting,” the transmission of explicit camera phone images from one party to another, and the willingness of some “voyeurs” to take pictures and other “creep shots” from beneath women’s skirts while out in public, the problem is only becoming more pervasive.
Life in the modern world, in which every adult you meet is carrying a high-resolution video camera, requires constant vigilance on all our parts. If you think you are not being recorded, you’re wrong. Surveillance and CCTV cameras are everywhere. Private citizens are recording their most intimate interactions. Your government combs through your phone records, and even your friends may be secretly taping you. If you have any secrets, if you have committed any sins, they will be exposed.
Smile for the camera.
Media wishing to interview Phil Elmore, please contact [email protected].
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