The parents in one of the world’s longest running and perhaps most bizarre reality shows, 19 Kids and Counting, have confirmed that one of their sons sexually abused at least four of their daughters.
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, who have 19 children (they lost a 20th during the last season) said son Josh – now an adult – molested four of their girls, and a young babysitter, back when he was under the age of 16.
Michelle Duggar, who has pretty much been pregnant for the past two decades, told Fox’s Megyn Kelly that Josh had confessed the abuse to them.
“We were shocked. I mean we were just devastated. I don’t think any parent is prepared for trauma like that,” she said.
She said the girls “didn’t know anything of his wrongdoing.”
Jim Bob said: “He said he was just curious about girls, and he had gone in and just basically touched them over their clothes while they were sleeping. They didn’t even know he had done it.”
He added: “We first off really talked to him. And then we talked to the girls.”
Michelle added: “Because it was so important as parents to talk to our girls and make sure that nothing else had happened … and none of them were aware of Josh’s wrongdoings.”
In deciding what to do, they argued he was “still a kid… still a juvenile. He wasn’t an adult” – so they sent him to do construction work with a Christian friend (the family are fundamentalist Christians who don’t believe in contraception, abortion, sex outside marriage, or careers for girls.)
Although they said they began “watching” Josh closely, he soon told them he had done it again “and we were just devastated. Again, this was not rape or anything like that. This was like touching over the clothes.”
The parents took Josh to confess his actions to State police, who took down the details but, perhaps because of Josh’s age, no action was taken.
Josh Duggar with wife, Anna
Some years later, in 2008, the Duggars launched their reality show (then called Sixteen Kids and Counting.) The fact that Josh had confessed to touching his sisters has swirled as a rumour on internet sites for years, and is thought to be behind Oprah’s decision to cancel a planned interview with the huge family some years ago.
The Duggars said they felt comfortable with how they handled the matter as parents. They said Josh was not a pedophile, because he “was actually 14 and just turned 15 when he did what he did. And I think that the legal definition is 16 and up for being an adult preying on a child. So he was a child preying on a child.” Two of the girls were aged 10 and eleven.
