‘7th Heaven’ dad ‘confessed’ to child molestation

He was a loving pastor dad on the family-friendly TV series “7th Heaven” — but behind the scenes, actor Stephen Collins was a child predator straight from hell, according to a secret recording made by his estranged wife.

The sermonizing star is being investigated by the NYPD’s Special Victims Division after he was allegedly taped admitting to sex crimes involving three underage girls, law-enforcement sources said.

“There is a formal complaint on file and the incident is being investigated,” a police source said.

A 54-year-old relative of Collins’ first wife made the claim in 2012 about an incident that happened 40 years ago, sources told The Post. The woman said he made her grab his penis in a Greenwich Village apartment, the law-enforcement source said.

Collins pulled his sick games with the woman several times, TMZ reported. She told cops the actor would shower and sneak into her room with only a towel on when she was a 10-year-old kid, TMZ reported.

He would flash himself and sometimes placed her hand on his penis, she told cops. All the while, she pretended to be asleep so he would get lost, she said.

In the shocking audiotape, secretly recorded during a therapy session with his estranged wife, Faye Grant, Collins allegedly admits he molested the young relative of his first wife over a period of three years.

“She was 11, then, like, 12 and 13,” he says in the recording posted on TMZ.

“Oh, my God,” Grant says softly.

“I told you before there was one instance where . . . there was one moment of touching where her hand, I put her hand on my penis,” he later confesses.

After his wife begs for more names, he admits to exposing himself to two other young girls, including one from New York and “the niece of a woman who lived across the way” in Los Angeles, TMZ reported.

Collins says he “made an amends” to that woman around 12 or 15 years ago.

“There were, like, three incidents over about three years,” he divulges.

The secret tape was legal in California because conversations can be recorded there if someone is seeking evidence of a violent felony, according to TMZ.

Grant, who has been in the midst of a nasty divorce with Collins since 2012, said in a statement Tuesday afternoon she “had no involvement whatsoever with the release of the tape.”

But in the couple’s divorce documents, Grant calls Collins a pedophile with a “long-term pattern of sexually molesting children.”

“He has refused to seek proper help or hospitalization for the predilection toward children,” she charges in the Los Angeles filing.

Collins was dropped from the upcoming sequel “Ted 2” on Tuesday after the allegations emerged. The TV Guide network and UP TV also announced they were pulling reruns of “7th Heaven” from their lineups.

Collins has resigned from the National Board of the Screen Actors Guild.

Meanwhile, cops responded to a report of a gunshot at the actor’s home late Tuesday night, but Los Angeles police said the house was empty.

The actor did not return calls for comment.

Additional reporting by David K. Li and Danika Fears