His Wife Just Made an Important Point

Two different cases are getting strangely intertwined when they really, really shouldn't be. On one side, we have the disgusting revelation that former 7th Heaven star Stephen Collins admitted on tape to child molestation. On the other side, we have divorce proceedings going on between Collins and his estranged wife, Faye Grant. When Collins' attorney finally released a statement, he ignored the first case almost entirely in order to accuse Grant of using the recording for extortion over the years. Now she and her attorney have fired back with some severe real-talk: Grant did not extort money from Collins and, even if she had, what does that have to do with anything?

Grant dismissed the idea that the recording has anything to do with their current divorce proceedings, stating that she is asking for no more than she is legally entitled and that the recording has not entered into those negotiations at all. Her lawyer, Larry Ginsberg, took it a step further in his statement.

From the very beginning of the dissolution of marriage matter, Faye has worked diligently to get this matter settled and to put it behind her while coping with the distress and trauma suffered as a result of the revelations about Mr. Collins’s life.... It is offensive and outrageous that Mr. Collins’s lawyer is now attempting to deflect focus away from the disturbing content of the recording and away from Mr. Collins's admissions by attacking the victims.

At this point, the Collins-Grant extortion claim is a he said, she said situation. However, that situation is not the situation that matters, as Grant's lawyer points out at the end of his quoted statement. The divorce proceedings and the investigation into the allegations against Collins are two separate things that should be kept as two separate things. Whatever legal issues may or may not exist between Collins and his estranged wife are not affected by, or related to, the fact that the recording exists; they're two very different things on two very different levels of seriousness.

The fact of the matter is, the focus at the moment should remain squarely on getting justice for the alleged victims named in the recording, and that's the case that we should be focused on. Grant and Collins' divorce, while tragic and likely to get uglier as further statements are released and new allegations come to light, is not as important to the public at large. It's between the two of them and should be settled between the two of them rather than intertwining it with the child molestation scandal that Collins is currently embroiled in.