Why do you think this is a referendum on privacy and confidentiality as opposed to a sick pedophile being rightfully exposed. Talk about missing the lead. This has nothing to do with confidentiality laws as he should have had no expectation his wife was going to keep his secret. It would be one thing if his therapist outed him, but that was not the case.
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I am not thinking this is a referendum on mandatory reporting laws.
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I mistakenly assumed that you were. You may be reacting to the specific instance, but other people are talking more broadly about the confidentiality issues involved. Some of us are more interested in talking about the broader issues than this one specific case. There is nothing remarkable about a pedophile getting outed. What is remarkable is the manner in which it happened. People focusing on that does not take away from the heinousness of child abuse.
I specifically said, ‘‘I’m not saying you’re wrong’’ so I don’t know why you assumed I consider one source more reliable than the other. While I appreciate all contributions intended to provide legal clarity, I am sick and sleep deprived and generally terrible at evaluating legal claims. Sorry.
I only brought that up because I hope her actions are illegal, for reasons I have outlined upthread. I am not defending, and will not ever defend the actions of a pedophile. But by the same token, I do care, and will not ever stop caring about issues of confidentiality in therapy. I don’t feel I should have to apologize for that or be treated as morally inferior because of it.
It seems like you may be projecting your own issues into this thread where they don’t really pertain. What the wife did is not much different than an informant wearing a wire. Your own experience as a 17-year-old having your patient-therapist confidentiality breached is not the same thing. Collins’ session wasn’t private once there was a 3rd party invited in.
No. It’s not extortion, bribery, kidnapping or violence. Or for the purpose of obtaining evidence. It was for the purpose of revenge, extortion and blackmail and divorce proceeding advantage herself. Procured by the fraudulent trick of telling him he was getting help. Good to know everyone who disagrees with you, who reads whole paragraphs is definitively wrong. You have your opinion, and I thought you were going to ignore me henceforth.
Here’s her latest Stephen Collins -- Fantasies About Oral Sex with His Own Child ... Wife Says where she claims to have known this for 14 years. Failing to report such abuse can be neglect in California. He is worthy of condemnation for having committed the crimes, she is worse because she knew and only turned him in once it was no longer advantageous to cover up his crimes and became more advantageous to turn him in.
I will not represent clients who secretly record conversations with others. It is simply too dangerous in a civil practice and most likely to break penal code provisions. There are procedures for law enforcement personnel to do so.
It was for the purpose of obtaining evidence, and it was legal based on the exception for felonies involving violence. That definition applies to molesting a child under 14 in California. Additionally, he has no expectation of privacy from his wife in a group therapy session.
I will bet you any amount of money she will not be charged because what she did was not illegal. If you are so certain, put your money where your mouth is.
Says you, the genius who compared taping someone to molesting kids.
Bullshit. That’s not at all a fair parsing of the story. She knew he made an extremely inappropriate joke years ago, not that he molested kids. Yes, it was clearly a red flag and a missed opportunity given what we know now. However, given that she provided the tape to police in 2012, and that they filed divorce papers fairly soon after that tape was recorded, I doubt she knew the entire time.
Why would you represent people who tape others. They are worse than child molesters!
I think that my comments were about the larger picture on privacy and confidentiality because that’s the quote I was responding to from Spice Weasel. You took those comments out of context and applied them narrowly to this case. I corrected you, and you’re taking my comments out of context again. While this thread is about this incident, some of the comments made here have been about the issues surrounding it, in a broader context. I was responding to those issues.
They are planning to commit a crime. And any lawyer who is advising them to do it is not acting as a lawyer, but as a co-conspirator. You claim there is a violence application when she planned this, but that she did not know the details about any child molestation. That isn’t consistent. In California, child molestation does not necessarily involve violence, unless you have a citation that says otherwise. Which you don’t. There is no allegation of violence here. You are wrong and you don’t know what you are talking about.
Both of them have committed criminal acts. Hers is with malice aforethought to hurting him and benefiting herself. I don’t want him alone with children ever again. I don’t want to ever be near her. He is a child molester, and she is a criminal sociopath. I really can’t figure why you are defending her criminal actions and redefining the law and even the definition of violence to excuse her.
According to this page, “A conviction under Penal Code Section 288.5 is considered a violent or serious felony and will count as a ‘strike’ under California’s Three Strikes Law.” The text of 288.5 is as follows:
I leave it to others to determine whether the rate of abuse was large enough to count, but from the little I’ve read it does seem to have been fairly frequent and all with children under the age of 14, so even if he doesn’t make it to this level, he seems to have really been trying for it.
I knew we had our rape apologists on the board, but I’m pretty surprised at this conversation.
If you want a confidential therapy session, don’t invite other people in. If you don’t want your child molestation to reflect poorly on you in a divorce (as well as otherwise ruin your life), don’t molest kids.
I don’t care if she is a vindictive bitch or not. Whatever her motivations, she no doubt saved some kids from harm.
I’m surprised that you could read anyone’s words here so inaccurately as to be equating them with a defense of Collins’ actions since every post I’ve read made it clear that the people posting in this thread are not condoning his actions in any way.
The words that they write are not condoning his actions in any way.
But say, for example, that I don’t see any logic behind bestiality laws. I would probably not enact such a law if I was supreme dictator. But the presence or non-presence of such a law really doesn’t affect me at all since I don’t have any desire to have sex with an non-human animal. So while I’d vote against such a law if it came down to me to decide, I wouldn’t seek out becoming the person who makes that decision nor would I get into an impassioned internet wars over the subject. It simply isn’t something that pings my radar in any way, so why put any effort - let alone passion - into it?
If I see someone parading down the street, with a big pro-marijuana sign, my tendency is to believe that the person with that sign smokes pot. If I see someone deathly frightened by the idea that a person’s crimes might result in punishment, I just don’t tend to think, “Well there’s someone selflessly sticking up for the rights of others!”
This has got NYPD: SVU:CSI:LMNOP written all over it.
Dude molests a kid; wife releases secretly recorded therapy tape; evidence is ruled inadmissible, dude gets off (no pun intended).
I wonder who will play Collins on TeeVee?
Scott Bakula.
One cite has already been provided by someone else. You are wrong in every aspect, but feel free to keep doubling down on your nonsense and baseless allegations. It’s good for people to know they should never hire you, trust you, or listen to your legal advice.
And since you are so sure she committed a crime more heinous than Collins, surely she will be arrested and convicted, and her lawyer will be sanctioned. Care to place a wager that that doesn’t happen?
Someone said the wife’s legal action of taping a conversation was worse than him molesting kids. Then he doubled down falsely alleging she protected him for years, and was thus worse than him. Even if I accepted all of that as true, her crimes are not even comparable to his.
Even the idea that a tape released by a third party that confirms someone is a pedophile devolves into a conversation where his wife is called a “spiteful bitch” is astounding to me. This is not test case for privacy or confidentiality. A group session, especially one in which you confess to molesting kids, provides no expectation of privacy or confidentiality. There is a fine debate to be had about those issues and mandatory reporting laws, but it’s not here.
Glad you have “no doubt” that she saved some kids from harm. While not so sure as you, I think she actually put kids in harm. If I had a problem such as this, I’d be much more likely not to seek help after this. How is that saving kids??
Like everyone, I think child molesters are at the bottom of the rung. But if we choose to take peoples rights away because we don’t like them, that’s a slippery slope that none of us want to be on.
To me, if she has truly known about this for a decade, and just taped it now, there is only one reason that she didn’t it - to ‘F’ this guy over in the divorce and she didn’t give a rat’s ass about any kids in the interim. They can both be wrong, and they are here.
Given his former job and stature, I think it’s almost a given he would have acted again or at least would have been able to. Now, nobody will allow him to be alone with kids. In what world does that put kids in harm?
None of his rights have been taken away.
Why speculate on something fairly unlikely given the timeline? Even so, her alleged errors are barely worth talking about given the context and seriousness of the underlying crime.
7th Heaven indeed… This must have surprised a bunch of people. Another reminder: don’t go around looking out for obvious outsider “monsters”, the danger is close to home.
Can someone who knows the law in the jurisdiction address if it covers an individual citizen motu proprio initiating such evidence gathering? Because the “informant with wire” analogy would make people think of some sort of formally authorized investigation. OTOH if a Private Eye can do it, then she probably can too.
You got a point there. “Three can keep a secret if…” and all that.
May have indeed, that would be a net positive.
But if this evidence WAS turned over to police two years ago, I am now really curious as to what was done or not done about it over two years.
All that said, I find the following disturbing…
Way to poison the entire well of the rights of the criminally accused. So all that shelf space of constitutional, statutory and case law was brought to us by people who themselves had something to hide? Apologists for crime?
I may have missed something but I don’t really see anyone “deathly afraid that a person’s crimes may result in punishment”. I see at least one person who seems to have valid reasons to take issue with breaches of expected confidentiality, but others are picking on procedural issues because, hell, that’s what the legal profession is there for, and that’s what we do without licenses in this board.
(But even so, no way it rises to “as bad or worse than him”, though, hell no. Her conduct is run-of-the-mill stuff that happens in hostile break-ups, most of which do NOT involve confessions of child molestation. Dick move, but does not rise to the level of actual lewd assault on children.)
Wow. “Alleged errors?” If you are so concerned about this, why are you pissed she didn’t do more sooner? They can both be wrong. Just because his crime (noticed you didn’t use “alleged” there) is most probably worse, doesn’t mean she should get a pass for her piss poor actions. Seems obvious to most her most pressing goal was to stick it up is ass, not to help the children.
And I’ll stand by my comment. If we make it less likely for people to get help with their problem (drug, alcohol, sexual, etc.) the worse off we all are.
Using this logic if a wife murders someone and her husband was a rapist the alleged errors of the husband are barely worth talking about given the seriousness of the wifes crime.
Because typically in situations like this, the spouse is often a victim of the perpetrator’s deception. Blaming her for not ratting him out sooner is almost as bad as asking the victim or the victim’s family why they didn’t press the matter sooner.
Furthermore, you seem to have some misunderstanding of how this thing happened. It’s been reported that Grant found all this out when she was contacted by any family member of one of the victims. This happened in Jan 2012. After which, she confronted Collins and subsequently reported him to authorities.
I believe she reported him prior to the recorded session in November 2012, but that is unclear in the reporting I’ve read. What is clear she provided he recordings to police soon after they were made some 10 months after she became aware of his actions. They began divorce proceedings soon afterwards. Could she have acting more emphatically during that period? Sure, but I can’t really judge her for that misstep given she reported him to the authorities, pretty soon after finding out, and realizing this wasn’t something that would resolve itself with therapy.
Furthermore, there is no evidence she leaked the tape, and given TMZ’s MO, they likely got it from a LE source who found it sifting through semi-related divorce documents. Honestly, why would she wait almost 2 years to leak the tape?
Sure. But when the difference in magnitude of their crimes is so stark, it’s not worth discussing what she did.
What did she do that was piss poor? And when someone admits something on tape, AND doesn’t even bother to deny it now, I think we can safely drop the alleged.
Why? She could have extorted him when the situation happened if that was her goal. She also wouldn’t have willingly turned the tape over to investigators in 2012 if she wanted to use it as leverage against him. What evidence is there that she had some bad motives, or even that she released the tape? If you are trying to maximize your divorce payout, you don’t permanently ruin the career of the person you need to continue paying you alimony.
Can you explain to me why some druggie would be less likely to seek help because a guy’s wife recorded him admitting to molesting kids? I don’t think anyone save other pedophiles will think her actions will have a chilling effect.