Stephen Collins: 'I'm not attracted to children'

"Are you a pedophile?"

Katie Couric lobs that question at Stephen Collins, as he opens up for the first time about molestation issues that first surfaced surrounding the 7th Heaven actor in October.

His response: "A pedophile is someone who is mainly or wholly attracted to children. I'm not. I had a distortion in my thinking where I acted out in those ways. But I'm absolutely not attracted, physically or sexually attracted to children. I'm just not."

He never was, he says.

He wasn't seeking "sexual contact" with the three young girls he has admitted inappropriately touching or exposing himself to. He describes an encounter with one girl in 1973, saying he knew he had done something "unthinkably wrong" that he couldn't take back. "I took her hand and moved it in such a way that she was touching me inappropriately," Collins tells Couric.

Colins also admits he exposed himself to a teenage girl in 1982 and another in 1994.

So if you're not a pedophile, what is your particular pathology?

"I gave in to exhibitionist urges," he says, adding that he had "big boundary issues."

Collins also reveals to Couric something about his own childhood that may have contributed to his behavior.

"I did have someone in my life when I was between the age of about 10 and 15, an older woman, who repeatedly exposed herself to me."

But he doesn't specifically blame his actions on that. "I did these things because, for whatever reasons — and I tried very hard in the last 20 years to understand. I did them. I'm not saying, you know, this woman did this, and therefore I did it."

The interview airs on 20/20 today at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.