April Price, 54, thought she was meeting her idol when she stayed with her aunt in 1983 and Stephen Collins was her neighbor – but it soon turned into a nightmare when the actor exposed himself to her on three separate occasions.
Price was 13 at the time.
She didn’t speak out about it publicly until the news about his sexual misconduct broke in 2014.
“I knew that I wouldn’t be believed,” she exclusively told the Post. “I would be accused of looking for money or dragging him down….I would have been the liar, and it would have been just my word against his, and nothing ever would have come of it.”
Collins, now 77, was best known for playing Eric Camden, the benevolent minister and father of seven kids, on the long-running family show “7th Heaven.” He’s now the topic of the premiere episode of the ID docuseries “Hollywood Demons.”
The role gave him the public persona of “America’s dad.” Jessica Biel, Barry Watson, Beverley Mitchell, Mackenzie Rosman and David Gallagher were among the actors who played his children.
Premiering Monday, March 24 at 9 p.m. on ID, the documentary covers how Collins targeted Price and other young girls, before his public image collapsed in 2014, when TMZ published a recording of Collins talking about exposing himself to minors.
That same year, he sat down for a “20/20” interview with Katie Couric. He admitted to exposing himself to several young girls, including Price when she was 13 and another girl when she was 10.
“If I spoke out before his own word basically damned him, I would have been [labeled] the gold digger or the attention seeker,” Price told the Post.
Collins claimed to Couric that he wasn’t attracted to young girls. According to the doc, he’s currently dating a “7th Heaven” fan, Jenny Nagle, 37, who is 40 years his junior.
Dr. Drew Pinsky, aka Dr. Drew, also appears in the documentary.
Dr. Drew told the Post that he can’t diagnose Collins since he hasn’t met him, but his behavior could potentially fall under the umbrella of sex addiction as opposed to pedophilia. If that’s the case, he explained, a man like that can be stopped.
“If you really get serious about it…it is something that people do get better from,” he said. “They go to work [on it], and it’s just as tough as any other addiction.”
Onscreen, he speculates that Collins could be a sociopath.
“Sometimes people are sociopathic and they don’t appreciate that they harm others,” he told The Post.
“Could he be a sex addict? Sure. Sex addiction goes to terrible places, it progresses until people do things that have horrible consequences. Could this be a predelection for children? He has always denied that.”
Based on the available information, Dr. Drew said that Collins could be targeting young girls because of “dominance and power and control.”
“Sometimes in the setting of sex addiction, people need more and more arousing circumstances and higher risk.”
Prior to the leaked 2014 recording and Collins’ “20/20” interview, Price explained that she had never watched “7th Heaven.”
“He basically, in my mind, was dead to me. I refuse to be a victim. I hate that mentality…. It made me feel weak and I didn’t like that. So, I just chose to not think about it.”
In 1996 when she was around 27, Price was working in Hollywood as a producer, and ran into Collins again on the set of a commercial. He apologized to her for exposing himself to her when she was 13.
“I felt relieved. I really did,” she recalled.
She added that his apology “took a big burden off of me, because at the time I was very, very worried that he was on a show with a bunch of kids. I was actually sitting back and waiting. If I heard even [a whisper] of anything happening on that set, I would have come forward and not even worried about my career.”
Price explained, “But at the time, I thought it was just me. And by him coming up and apologizing, I thought, ‘Wow, he’s taking responsibility for what he did and he’s genuinely sorry and he’s doing the work.’ Like, ‘Okay, he’s trying to better himself.’”
But, that changed when the 2014 tape leaked and she learned he had targeted other young girls.
“As long as I thought I was the only one, it was easy for me to keep my mouth shut because I felt like it was a burden that I could carry,” said Price.
The documentary covers how Collins didn’t apparently target any young girls on the “7th Heaven” set during that show’s eleven-year run from 1996 to 2007.
“I really have deep empathy for all of his cast mates to be truthful,” Price told The Post, “because they have to have the worst conflicting emotions about him ever. Because the person that they know and they work with would not be the same person, that he was behind closed doors.”
“It’s got to be very hard for them,” she continued. “And I hate the fact that they’ve lost a lot of royalties, I’m sure, over the fact that he’s basically tarnished the reputation of the entire show by his actions. That bothers me. But anything that they feel – even if they still think that he’s the greatest person ever – that’s not their fault. That’s what he did, because he victimized them, too.”
Although his career imploded, Collins faced no criminal or civil prosecution.
Is it dangerous that he’s still out there?
“If it were pedophilia, that sometimes does not stop,” Dr. Drew explained.
“But if it’s sex addiction, if he gets serious about it, yes, people get better all the time. He would have to really be honest and make amends.”
About whether he’s faced adequate consequences, Price said, “For somebody like him, I don’t even know if sitting in jail would be as bad to him as losing his career and everything else. So in a lot of ways, probably [he’s faced enough consequences]. But not if he’s in a position where he can hurt somebody else. That’s the great unknown, I guess.”
She added, “But I think he’s got an enormous ego, and the fact that he’s completely out of the public eye and the way he would have fed off of the fame….that’s got to be pretty hard to live with.”
