Star of Family Values Hit 7th Heaven Accused of Child Molestation

Conservatives always held up the Aaron Spelling’s WB drama 7th Heaven as a beacon of family values. The show was about a minister, Eric Camden, played by Stephen Collins, and his family, which included his wife and children. Back in 1996, The New York Times called this a “do-good TV family, sort of like the Waltons.”

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The Parents Television Council heaped praise on the show’s portrayal of a “functional family.” Series creator Brenda Hampton said, “It’s just a family you don’t mind spending an hour with.” Christiancinema.com said the show turned “dramatic plotlines about serious social issues into a positive affirmation of family values.”

Marisa Meltzer of Slate described the show in 2006 as a show that “serves up weekly doses of family values so retro and heavy-handed that professing a love for the show doesn’t even pass as ironically hip.”

The show took family values so seriously that actress Jessica Biel was allegedly written out of the series during season 5 because she posed semi-nude at age 17 for Gear magazine.

USA Today reported in 2005 that, “Catherine Hicks, who played Stephen Collins’ wife, acknowledged that 7th Heaven is a feel-good show, ‘it’s not sanctimonious. We’ve addressed real behavior problems in society that you or I would never know about.’

One blog suggested back in 2009 that if sex sells, the show proved that “the absence of sex also sells. Not only the absence of sex, but the inclusion of Christ sells.” It also told us that “We all need a little 7th Heaven.”

But if heaven comes with hefty doses of Stephen Collins’ penis?

As it turns out, not everyone on the set took family values seriously, and the show did have a few things we would never know about – until now. And it’s uncertain whether or not young girls minded spending an hour with Stephen Collins, because TMZ is now reporting that Collins is under investigation for child molestation of girls as young as 11, 12, and 13 years of age.

According to TMZ, Collins “confessed to his estranged wife he was a child molester, and it’s all on tape … a tape obtained by TMZ. And the New York Police Dept. is now conducting an active criminal investigation involving sexual contact with multiple children.”

His actions included, by his own admission, putting a girl’s hand on his penis and exposing himself to other girls.

The Family Values?

This revelation of child molestation is an all-too familiar view of the dark underbelly of Family Values on the Religious Right, where talk is cheap. We have seen an almost endless stream of disgraced Family Values types over the past few years and the list is not likely to end here.

Sex is the dark obsession at the heart of the Religious Right’s female problem, from opposing sex education in our schools, to the college rape culture and that idea that “women ask for it,” to viewing women as “penis homes,” to sick fascination of conservative dads with their daughter’s virginity, to the desire to legislate at local, state, and federal level, a woman’s use of her own vagina, and to the idea that men should be able to rape women if abortion is legal.

In one area Republicans have succeeded admirably: it is in keeping abuse and molestation in the dark closet where they like it, safety hidden away so they can tell everybody else not to do what they themselves so much enjoy doing.

It is clearly time we make sex crimes the topic, not of a debate because there is nothing to debate, but of a national conversation.

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.