ONTD Original: Great Scandals of The Evangelical Church
OP is back with part two of May's sermon!
The end of May and the Judgement of Smuggar cometh nigh. I have done as much research as I can bear to and I probably still have some of this in the wrong order because there is a fucking lot. I know some of you have been following this trial and please don't feel shy about correcting me if I have something wrong or out of order. (This whole fucking family is out of order, out of pocket and potentially out of the spotlight for good)
Welcome to the
Buckle up sistren, there's fuckery to uncover
Chapter 3 -Part 1: explains Quiverfull doctrine and how the Duggars got famous.
Chapter 3 - Part 2: Josh Smuggar and the Trial of Utterly Disgusting Bullshit.
This family is the literal worst and associates with nothing but pieces of shit.
* = CW: discussion of sexual abuse and child sexual assault I am going to be as general as possible in descriptions. Take care of yourselves bbs. If you can't bring yourself to read it all, that's OK. Just skip to The Verdict tag.
At the height of Duggar-mania in June 2013, Josh was named the executive director of Family Research Council Action, the Political Action Committee that once was the political arm of Focus on the Family. FRCA President Tony Perkins stated that Josh's involvement in the popular reality show was a key factor in granting Josh his high position in the group, hoping it would help the organization with its grass-roots organization efforts in the US. Also, the family's close relationship with former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee didn't hurt in getting him the position at the right-wing conservative PAC.
THE Scandal:
InTouch Weekly, a well known celebrity news magazine, sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the Springdale, AR (the Duggars' hometown) Police and then printed a story on May 19 2015 about claims that Josh had sexually assaulted a girl when he was a teenager, bringing the house down on the entire Duggar phenomenon.
Josh stepped down from his job two days later on May 21, after police reports from 2006 were revealed in another InTouch article that he molested not one, but five girls in his teens. TLC suspended airing 19 and Counting. Jim Bob and Michelle revealed that four of the girls Josh was accused of assaulting were his sisters, naming two of them, Jessa and Jill. On June 5th of 2015, Jessa and Jill had an in-depth interview with Megan Kelly (then of Fox News). Even though Jessa tried to defend her brother against being called a child molester or a pedophile, she and Jill confirmed that their brother did indeed assault them sexually.
How did this only come out in 2015?
The Timeline *: In 2006, Jim Bob and Michelle were in Chicago to appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show. A call was received by the Arkansas Child Abuse hotline that abuse was happening in the Duggar household. At the same time, an anonymous email was sent to Harpo Studio producers during the Duggars' pre-interview screening, reporting the same info. Oprah canceled the Duggar parents' appearance and they returned home to Arkansas to speak with the police.
It came out during these December 2006 interviews that Josh first told his father about fondling several victims while they were asleep in their house in March of 2002, when Josh was 14. In July of the same year, Josh came to Jim Bob again with another tale of assaulting a sleeping victim, this time on the Duggar's living room couch. Jim Bob allegedly 'punished' Josh for the first time after this confession.
A year after the first confessions (2003), 15 year-old Josh approached both his parents with more accounts of molesting a victim who was sitting on his lap and another in the family laundry room. For the first time, the Duggars reached out to their "church elders" on what could be done. The elders (all men, ARE WE REALLY SURPISED AT THIS POINT?) agreed that Josh needed some form of treatment and this is when he was sent to a Christian counseling program where he did 'manual labor'.
Something to note: there was no OFFICIAL 'church'. The "congregation" was a group of connected families that met at each other's homes to have 'fellowship'. This is common among a lot of super conservative and non-denominational groups, and especially Quiverfull proponents. THIS IS IMPORTANT LATER.
At the time of the 2006 report, Jim Bob claimed he could no longer remember the name of the facility, but it is theorized that it was ALERT, affiliated with and run by family friend (you'll learn that Jim Bob has an AWFUL lot of awful friends) and head of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (the organization that many Christian families use as their homeschooling resource) Bill Gothard...who himself has been accused of more than 34 counts of sexual harassment and stepped down from his organization in 2014 because of those charges.
It is rumored that the buzz cut that Josh sported in the early DHC/TLC days during the specials was part of the punishment for molesting his sisters. The "faith training" only occurred after the third incident reported to Jim Bob in 2003 and after their "church" offered Josh an ultimatum: either shave your head in front of the "congregation" or we'll shave the head of one of your five victims. (Where would we be without a good ol' round of victim shaming?)
When Josh returned from treatment, he was spoken to by family friend and former Arkansas State Trooper Joseph Hutchens, who was well known to several of the fathers in this informal church group, after he was told about Josh's account by Jim Bob and a church elder. Josh was advised by Hutchens 'very sternly' about what might happen to him if this behavior continued, then reported to Jim Bob that 'nothing else can really be done after this'.
(Later on, Trooper Hutchens was convicted of and is currently serving time on fifty-six charges of possessing child pornography.)
Michelle and Jim Bob decided the best course of action was to keep Josh away from his younger siblings and to stop further "problems" by not allowing the boys and girls to play together after a certain age. There were also allegations that Josh was married off during season 1 of 17 and Counting in order to get him out of the house and away from the "temptation" of his sisters. (Because you know, it's all the girls' fault after all. Apparently their modesty wear wasn't modest enough. Hussies. /s).
Of course by the time of the 2006 interviews, the statute of limitation on the initial assaults had expired. Though online message boards devoted to the Duggars, the shows and ex-Evangelicals were talking about these reports, the media and public at large heard nothing about any of this until the 2015 article from InTouch.
Jim Bob and Michelle were highly offended by these reports being revealed, as they felt it violated the privacy of their child, who was a minor at the time of the assaults and clearly this was not r**e-r**e. Just sorta-kinda-r**e. "Mistakes that juveniles make when they're young should be sealed," said Jim Bob.
(Never mind that they outed four of their daughters as victims and named two of them. Cause you know, their privacy isn't worth shit-all. They're GIRLS.)
The original 2006 police interviews were destroyed by Arkansas state officials on the orders of Judge Stacey Zimmerman the day after the May 21st InTouch article. Funny how Judge Zimmerman and Jim Bob shared a friend. A friend named former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. (But as we all know, the Internet is forever and you can still find unretracted versions of said police reports without a lot of effort on teh_Google.)
TLC finally canceled 19 Kids and Counting in July of 2015, only after several high profile advertisers yanked ads from the show, including Walgreens, Payless Shoes, General Mills and Choice Hotels, and streaming service Hulu removed the specials and seasons 1 and 2 of the show.
In August of 2015, Josh's information was found in a data breach of the well-known "cheating" website AshleyMadison.com and he was exposed as picking up women and sex workers on the site, none of whom had anything good to say about him. Smuggar was whisked away to a long-term treatment center, later discovered to be Reformers Unanimous, a faith-based recovery center, to do more manual work to cure his 'sexual addiction'. Jim Bob and Michelle have a relationship with the Reformers and North Love Baptist Church, the congregation associated with it. Jim Bob even spoke at the Reformers national convention in October of 2014 in Rockford IL. (I KNOW SO SURPRISING! It's like he's using all of his friends to cover this up. MY GOODNESS.)
You would think that this would have stopped Josh's gross and vile actions and Jim Bob's need to cover shit up. Der.
The Arrest *: In April of 2021, Joshua James Dugger was arrested by the US Marshals on federal charges of receiving and possessing child pornography, including watching targeted files on the day a raid was conducted on his place of business, where the signals of the files were emanating.
(Please don't go searching for child porn as 'research'. It didn't go so well for a former ONTDer. That's gross. Seriously.)
Josh was caught up in a US Department of Justice operation called Project Safe Childhood in November of 2019 that was tracking the exploitation of children and pinged active child sexual assault material (CSAM) files being sent from and received coming into the used car dealership where Josh was employed. The dealership was searched and CSAM of children under the age of 12 were found on a laptop used by Josh...a laptop that mysteriously contained a Linux partition with a TOR (dark web) browser designed to evade tracking programs that were on the standard operating system used for the dealership's business.
According to the Federal agent in charge of the investigation, the CSAM found on the seized electronics represented the 'top five of the worst of the worst' he'd ever had to examine in his entire career.
Josh's attorneys declared at the time of the arrest that they would vigorously defend the charges and fought having any mention of the earlier child assault allegations exposed by InTouch brought up. (Which didn't work, those allegations were totally brought up.) They also tried to point out that due to Josh's homeschooling upbringing, he couldn't possibly have the skills to create the partition in his laptop. He was just too dumb.
(Listen. My 76 year old ultra-fundie mother can't change her goddamned answering machine but sure as fuck figured out how to buy five houses and 4 acres of land in three states, get to the internet and download music on her Kindle, and installed and used Zoom on her laptop so she could attend her training classes, church AND her brother's funeral in the middle of a pandemic with a Jamaican high school diploma earned in the early '60s, so miss me with allllllllllllll that bullshit, my dude.)
During the arraignment, District Judge Christy Comstock ruled that Josh would be released from jail, but remanded into the custody of long-time family friends LaCourt and Maria Rebers instead of to his parents or his wife. He could have zero contact with minor children not in his immediate family and only see his own minor children in the presence of his wife of 13 years, Anna, who at the time was pregnant with their seventh child.
The judge stated during her ruling, "I cannot in good conscience send you home. There are five or six minor children in your parents' house, in your house and grandparents' house."
Josh was also not allowed to access the internet via any device and was banned from possessing erotica of any kind. (No AO3 for YOU, scumbag.)
The Federal Trial *:
There was a pool of 52 people who were called to be potential jurors in the Federal trial of one Joshua James Duggar. There was a wide cross section of citizens called, including the father-in-law of one of Josh's sisters! One had been worried that her boyfriend was one of the witnesses, but she was assured that wasn't the case. Another potential juror had purchased two horses from another witness.
On the 29th of November, there was an evidentiary hearing held on whether or not Josh's past history of sexual assault and abuse could be used by the prosecution.
Jim Bob showed his ass to the female prosecutor several times during his testimony in this hearing: refusing to answer questions, repeatedly declaring that this was all based on files that should have been sealed and basically being offended that a mere woman had the audacity to question him at all like she was his equal or some bullshite like that. And expecting the judge, Timothy L. Brooks, to be on his side as a fellow male.
Judge Brooks called Jim Bob an unreliable witness 'apparently reluctant to testify against his son." YA THINK?
Judge Brooks determined that the past assaults AND COVER-UPS were relevant to the case and would be allowed to be admitted into evidence during the trial by the prosecution. Also, there were no witnesses that would be kept from testifying due to 'pastoral privilege', because at the time of the historical child sexual abuse...the Duggars did not belong to a formal church. There was no formal organization or 'pastor', so there was no implied 'privilege'. (dun dun DUUUUNNNN)
The 12 jurors and 4 alternates were seated November 30, 2021. The trial started on December 1, 2021.
Along with testimony from many of the local authorities and Federal agents who conducted the investigations, a former employee of the car dealership was called as a witness who recounted a conversation that Josh had with a Jim Holt about setting up partitions on computers and laptops and how that said partitions would need to be accessed in person and couldn't be reached remotely.
During the trial, there was other evidence submitted by the prosecution, including other content that Duggar downloaded prior to the CSAM that had landed him in jail. There were r**e focused videos that were downloaded then deleted.
One of the most memorable witnesses for the prosecution was a woman named Bobye Holt, Jim Holt's wife. The Holts, along with about five or six other families, were in the informal 'church' that the Duggars worshiped within their collective homes in the early aughts. (Remember, holding services in the home as opposed in an organized church is a common trait of Quiverfull families.) Jim Bob and Michelle had been friends with Jim and Bobye Holt for about 35 years.
Remember how Josh's defense attorneys didn't want any mention about their client's prior history of sexual assault and tried to claim 'pastoral privilege' to keep witnesses off the stand?
Bobye Holt was the reason why.
Bobye Holt testified that Josh had confessed to her about molesting multiple underage girls as a teenager in 2003. She offered graphic details of the conversations and noted that Josh had confessed to touching girls at least ten years younger than him at the time of the assaults he was speaking with her about.
Remember, at the time of this conversation, Josh is 15 years old.
Josh made these confessions while the Holts were allowing Josh to court their oldest daughter. The assaults that Dugger confessed to Mrs. Holt were in regards to a different set of girls than the ones he told his parents about.
THE HOLT GIRLS.
Duggar had confessed to his girlfriend's mother that while Jim and Bobye Holt were planning to marry off their eldest daughter to him, he had assaulted his girlfriend's younger sisters, plus admitting to the other times he had already told his parents about. When Mrs. Holt went to Jim Bob and Michelle to inform them of their son's confession, their response was 'they didn't want to hear it. The Church would fix Josh.' The courtship was ended by the Duggar elders. (It came out in a later lawsuit that Bobye Holt totally downplayed this relationship. Josh and her daughter were full on ENGAGED.)
The judge did remind the jury that Duggar was on trial ONLY for the two charges that had been brought before them as the prosecution rested their case.
Josh's lawyers put forth the defense that their client was innocent and someone else was framing him for these charges, an ex-employee of the dealership. They even tried to get brother Jed on the stand to testify that this ex-employee was responsible for placing the files on Josh's laptop and/or placing a thumb drive on the computer in question to create a remote connection. And wasn't it convenient that the ex-employee in question was already a registered sex offender?
Judge Brooks shot that down fairly quickly.
However the computer expert the defense did have on the stand said that the prosecution witnesses were all incorrect and that such a partition could be accessed remotely by another party. In light of that testimony, the prosecution recalled one of their witnesses, who both demonstrated creating a Linux partition on a computer provided by the court and reiterated that there was no way that a remote connection to it could be created by someone of Duggar's skill level. He would need to be at the computer in order to access said partition.
The Verdict: Joshua James Duggar was found unanimously guilty of two counts of possessing child sex abuse images. He is currently awaiting sentencing, which will happen on May 25, 2022. A delay was granted from the original April 20th sentencing date, requested by the defense due to COVID restrictions messing with scheduled meetings, but they supposedly also used the delay time to look for more information to attempt to file an appeal for their client.
Smuggar faces up to 20 40 years in prison, fines totaling up to $500,000 for both counts and must be permanently registered as a sex offender.
5/18/22 EDIT: The two counts actually are 20 years per count. The Federal sentencing guidelines for sentencing a first time offender with this conviction is 20 years. The max sentence is 40 years; the Feds are asking for an additional 10 years over the recommended sentence, which would be 30 years. Still under the Federal max, but definitely more than the recommended guidelines.
Wife Anna is staying with her husband and has linked to plans his attorney has made to try and appeal the conviction on her Instagram. She gave birth to her and Josh's seventh child, Madyson, in October of 2021, just before the trial. It is reported that she and her children are living in a renovated warehouse on Jim Bob and Michelle's property while awaiting Josh's sentencing. In order to fund his defense Josh and Anna sold their 'dream' home, but it was not in good shape and was sold for well below the $799,000 asking price.
Josh's *ahem* MISDEEDS can affect the family as a whole in another way due to this case: how this is possible I do not know, but Arkansas is one of two states (PA being the other) that do not allow children to be homeschooled if there is a registered sex offender in the household or is a regular visitor to the household. (I KNOW, RIGHT!???? Why is this not everywhere? Home states of NY and MA, I am side-eyeing you hard right now.)
If Josh is given less than the full sentence (a likely chance as a first time convicted felon), then when he is released from prison, there will still be minor children on the Duggar compound. And as per the laws of the State of Arkansas, All minor children in the combined Duggar household will be required to attend a school outside of the home so as to comply with state regulations for regular contact with mandatory reporters as long as Josh resides in the home. "Given their relative isolation, homeschooled children are more vulnerable to exploitation."
Ain't that a kick in the head? Look at Arkansas, doing something right.
On May 11th, the prosecution and defense both submitted their sentencing memorandums to Judge Brooks. This document outlines what they believe the defendant deserves as a sentence for his convicted crimes.
The defense's memo was 30 pages long, asking for a sentence of five years due to the lack of prior criminal history. It also included letters from Duggar's wife Anna, family members including his mother Michelle, family friends and neighbors, asking the court to 'have mercy' on Duggar, as he was a good person and had supported 'a poor widow' financially and spiritually during his arraignment and trial. (Oh. Whoopdeedoo. Did she have kids he could potentially groom? YEAH I SAID IT, YOU WERE ALL THINKING IT DON'T LIE.)
The prosecution's memo was far shorter: they asked only for the judge to consider the severity of the crimes committed and requested an additional ten years over the twenty year maximum. They only submitted two victim impact letters in the body of their memo: from one of the children in the CASM Duggar was caught with and that child's father on how Duggar's crimes have affected their family.
Current Status: The Quiverfull movement's heavy lean into the idea of the patriarchal head of household has led to many women and children raised in the Quiverfull doctrine leaving and rejecting it. They have also written articles exposing the high levels of physical, emotional and sexual abuse committed in Quiverfull households and call the movement a cult.
After 19 Kids and Counting was pulled off the air, TLC tried to continue with Jill & Jessa: Counting On, which at first featured only Jill, Jessa, and their families, but quickly expanded to cover the rest of the Duggar siblings as well as returning Jim Bob and Michelle to TV. With the reintroduction of the majority of the family, the show's name was changed to Counting On.
Jill's husband Derek was fired by TLC in 2017 after making transphobic comments about fellow TLC star, Jazz Jennings and her show I am Jazz, detailing her journey as a trans teenager. He tried to plead 'religious beliefs' but nope fired so fired. Derek has also made accusations that Jim Bob was withholding paychecks and money from family members, including his wife, Jill.
Four of the Duggar sisters: Jinger, Jill, Joy-Anna and Jessa filed a civil suit against the city of Springdale, Washington County, various public officials and the publishers of InTouch Weekly in 2017 for revealing their identities. It also accused the Springdale Police of being in cahoots with InTouch.
Counting On ran for 10 seasons, until Josh once again derailed the family fame train by getting arrested for his CSAM possession in 2021.
Jim Bob recently decided to beef with Paul Caldwell, the pastor of the Lighthouse Baptist Church, the congregation where the Duggars were recently attending. Caldwell's daughter Kendra is married to Joe Duggar. Jim Bob at one point had purchased or was paying for a home for Joe's in-laws, but after Josh's first sexual abuse scandal, the Caldwells were forced to move in with Kendra and Joe.
The conflict is related to Caldwell insisting on holding full services during COVID-19, even after Gov. Asa Hutchinson mandated that large gatherings shouldn't be held. Oh, it wasn't because Jim Bob was being responsible. He was trying to save the family image and thought it would be a bad look to be attending services in defiance of the mandate while Josh was under investigation. Jim Bob slandered Caldwell and stole about 85% of his congregation out from under him. This wasn't the first time either: Jim Bob has done this several times over the years. It's considered a Duggar M.O. to join a congregation, cause some sort of drama then leave, taking a fair number of people with them.
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
disclaimer: I do believe in a higher power out there in the cosmos (I choose to call it 'God', you good sistren can call it whatever it is you want to). Be a good person. Treat others how you want to be treated. DO NOT LET SOME FLASHY ASS GUY ON THE RADIO/TV TELL YOU WHAT TO BELIEVE. Or one who stands in front of you in a pulpit on Sundays either. The best lesson I got out of my years of Christian captivity (oop, education) was the one that my mother really didn't want me to have: QUESTION EVERYTHING. The Bible is a book, claiming to be the Word of God but written by FALLIBLE HUMAN MEN. It has been messed with multiple times and fashioned to fit what a small group of people (white men) WANTED it to say. You're allowed to challenge it. As a matter of fact, it's your duty to.
tl;dr: Matthew 7: 3-5
Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye...
The end of May and the Judgement of Smuggar cometh nigh. I have done as much research as I can bear to and I probably still have some of this in the wrong order because there is a fucking lot. I know some of you have been following this trial and please don't feel shy about correcting me if I have something wrong or out of order. (This whole fucking family is out of order, out of pocket and potentially out of the spotlight for good)
Welcome to the
Buckle up sistren, there's fuckery to uncover
Chapter 3 -Part 1: explains Quiverfull doctrine and how the Duggars got famous.
Chapter 3 - Part 2: Josh Smuggar and the Trial of Utterly Disgusting Bullshit.
This family is the literal worst and associates with nothing but pieces of shit.
* = CW: discussion of sexual abuse and child sexual assault I am going to be as general as possible in descriptions. Take care of yourselves bbs. If you can't bring yourself to read it all, that's OK. Just skip to The Verdict tag.
At the height of Duggar-mania in June 2013, Josh was named the executive director of Family Research Council Action, the Political Action Committee that once was the political arm of Focus on the Family. FRCA President Tony Perkins stated that Josh's involvement in the popular reality show was a key factor in granting Josh his high position in the group, hoping it would help the organization with its grass-roots organization efforts in the US. Also, the family's close relationship with former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee didn't hurt in getting him the position at the right-wing conservative PAC.
THE Scandal:
InTouch Weekly, a well known celebrity news magazine, sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the Springdale, AR (the Duggars' hometown) Police and then printed a story on May 19 2015 about claims that Josh had sexually assaulted a girl when he was a teenager, bringing the house down on the entire Duggar phenomenon.
Josh stepped down from his job two days later on May 21, after police reports from 2006 were revealed in another InTouch article that he molested not one, but five girls in his teens. TLC suspended airing 19 and Counting. Jim Bob and Michelle revealed that four of the girls Josh was accused of assaulting were his sisters, naming two of them, Jessa and Jill. On June 5th of 2015, Jessa and Jill had an in-depth interview with Megan Kelly (then of Fox News). Even though Jessa tried to defend her brother against being called a child molester or a pedophile, she and Jill confirmed that their brother did indeed assault them sexually.
How did this only come out in 2015?
The Timeline *: In 2006, Jim Bob and Michelle were in Chicago to appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show. A call was received by the Arkansas Child Abuse hotline that abuse was happening in the Duggar household. At the same time, an anonymous email was sent to Harpo Studio producers during the Duggars' pre-interview screening, reporting the same info. Oprah canceled the Duggar parents' appearance and they returned home to Arkansas to speak with the police.
It came out during these December 2006 interviews that Josh first told his father about fondling several victims while they were asleep in their house in March of 2002, when Josh was 14. In July of the same year, Josh came to Jim Bob again with another tale of assaulting a sleeping victim, this time on the Duggar's living room couch. Jim Bob allegedly 'punished' Josh for the first time after this confession.
A year after the first confessions (2003), 15 year-old Josh approached both his parents with more accounts of molesting a victim who was sitting on his lap and another in the family laundry room. For the first time, the Duggars reached out to their "church elders" on what could be done. The elders (all men, ARE WE REALLY SURPISED AT THIS POINT?) agreed that Josh needed some form of treatment and this is when he was sent to a Christian counseling program where he did 'manual labor'.
Something to note: there was no OFFICIAL 'church'. The "congregation" was a group of connected families that met at each other's homes to have 'fellowship'. This is common among a lot of super conservative and non-denominational groups, and especially Quiverfull proponents. THIS IS IMPORTANT LATER.
At the time of the 2006 report, Jim Bob claimed he could no longer remember the name of the facility, but it is theorized that it was ALERT, affiliated with and run by family friend (you'll learn that Jim Bob has an AWFUL lot of awful friends) and head of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (the organization that many Christian families use as their homeschooling resource) Bill Gothard...who himself has been accused of more than 34 counts of sexual harassment and stepped down from his organization in 2014 because of those charges.
It is rumored that the buzz cut that Josh sported in the early DHC/TLC days during the specials was part of the punishment for molesting his sisters. The "faith training" only occurred after the third incident reported to Jim Bob in 2003 and after their "church" offered Josh an ultimatum: either shave your head in front of the "congregation" or we'll shave the head of one of your five victims. (Where would we be without a good ol' round of victim shaming?)
When Josh returned from treatment, he was spoken to by family friend and former Arkansas State Trooper Joseph Hutchens, who was well known to several of the fathers in this informal church group, after he was told about Josh's account by Jim Bob and a church elder. Josh was advised by Hutchens 'very sternly' about what might happen to him if this behavior continued, then reported to Jim Bob that 'nothing else can really be done after this'.
(Later on, Trooper Hutchens was convicted of and is currently serving time on fifty-six charges of possessing child pornography.)
Michelle and Jim Bob decided the best course of action was to keep Josh away from his younger siblings and to stop further "problems" by not allowing the boys and girls to play together after a certain age. There were also allegations that Josh was married off during season 1 of 17 and Counting in order to get him out of the house and away from the "temptation" of his sisters. (Because you know, it's all the girls' fault after all. Apparently their modesty wear wasn't modest enough. Hussies. /s).
Of course by the time of the 2006 interviews, the statute of limitation on the initial assaults had expired. Though online message boards devoted to the Duggars, the shows and ex-Evangelicals were talking about these reports, the media and public at large heard nothing about any of this until the 2015 article from InTouch.
Jim Bob and Michelle were highly offended by these reports being revealed, as they felt it violated the privacy of their child, who was a minor at the time of the assaults and clearly this was not r**e-r**e. Just sorta-kinda-r**e. "Mistakes that juveniles make when they're young should be sealed," said Jim Bob.
(Never mind that they outed four of their daughters as victims and named two of them. Cause you know, their privacy isn't worth shit-all. They're GIRLS.)
The original 2006 police interviews were destroyed by Arkansas state officials on the orders of Judge Stacey Zimmerman the day after the May 21st InTouch article. Funny how Judge Zimmerman and Jim Bob shared a friend. A friend named former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. (But as we all know, the Internet is forever and you can still find unretracted versions of said police reports without a lot of effort on teh_Google.)
TLC finally canceled 19 Kids and Counting in July of 2015, only after several high profile advertisers yanked ads from the show, including Walgreens, Payless Shoes, General Mills and Choice Hotels, and streaming service Hulu removed the specials and seasons 1 and 2 of the show.
In August of 2015, Josh's information was found in a data breach of the well-known "cheating" website AshleyMadison.com and he was exposed as picking up women and sex workers on the site, none of whom had anything good to say about him. Smuggar was whisked away to a long-term treatment center, later discovered to be Reformers Unanimous, a faith-based recovery center, to do more manual work to cure his 'sexual addiction'. Jim Bob and Michelle have a relationship with the Reformers and North Love Baptist Church, the congregation associated with it. Jim Bob even spoke at the Reformers national convention in October of 2014 in Rockford IL. (I KNOW SO SURPRISING! It's like he's using all of his friends to cover this up. MY GOODNESS.)
You would think that this would have stopped Josh's gross and vile actions and Jim Bob's need to cover shit up. Der.
The Arrest *: In April of 2021, Joshua James Dugger was arrested by the US Marshals on federal charges of receiving and possessing child pornography, including watching targeted files on the day a raid was conducted on his place of business, where the signals of the files were emanating.
(Please don't go searching for child porn as 'research'. It didn't go so well for a former ONTDer. That's gross. Seriously.)
Josh was caught up in a US Department of Justice operation called Project Safe Childhood in November of 2019 that was tracking the exploitation of children and pinged active child sexual assault material (CSAM) files being sent from and received coming into the used car dealership where Josh was employed. The dealership was searched and CSAM of children under the age of 12 were found on a laptop used by Josh...a laptop that mysteriously contained a Linux partition with a TOR (dark web) browser designed to evade tracking programs that were on the standard operating system used for the dealership's business.
According to the Federal agent in charge of the investigation, the CSAM found on the seized electronics represented the 'top five of the worst of the worst' he'd ever had to examine in his entire career.
Josh's attorneys declared at the time of the arrest that they would vigorously defend the charges and fought having any mention of the earlier child assault allegations exposed by InTouch brought up. (Which didn't work, those allegations were totally brought up.) They also tried to point out that due to Josh's homeschooling upbringing, he couldn't possibly have the skills to create the partition in his laptop. He was just too dumb.
(Listen. My 76 year old ultra-fundie mother can't change her goddamned answering machine but sure as fuck figured out how to buy five houses and 4 acres of land in three states, get to the internet and download music on her Kindle, and installed and used Zoom on her laptop so she could attend her training classes, church AND her brother's funeral in the middle of a pandemic with a Jamaican high school diploma earned in the early '60s, so miss me with allllllllllllll that bullshit, my dude.)
During the arraignment, District Judge Christy Comstock ruled that Josh would be released from jail, but remanded into the custody of long-time family friends LaCourt and Maria Rebers instead of to his parents or his wife. He could have zero contact with minor children not in his immediate family and only see his own minor children in the presence of his wife of 13 years, Anna, who at the time was pregnant with their seventh child.
The judge stated during her ruling, "I cannot in good conscience send you home. There are five or six minor children in your parents' house, in your house and grandparents' house."
Josh was also not allowed to access the internet via any device and was banned from possessing erotica of any kind. (No AO3 for YOU, scumbag.)
The Federal Trial *:
There was a pool of 52 people who were called to be potential jurors in the Federal trial of one Joshua James Duggar. There was a wide cross section of citizens called, including the father-in-law of one of Josh's sisters! One had been worried that her boyfriend was one of the witnesses, but she was assured that wasn't the case. Another potential juror had purchased two horses from another witness.
On the 29th of November, there was an evidentiary hearing held on whether or not Josh's past history of sexual assault and abuse could be used by the prosecution.
Jim Bob showed his ass to the female prosecutor several times during his testimony in this hearing: refusing to answer questions, repeatedly declaring that this was all based on files that should have been sealed and basically being offended that a mere woman had the audacity to question him at all like she was his equal or some bullshite like that. And expecting the judge, Timothy L. Brooks, to be on his side as a fellow male.
Judge Brooks called Jim Bob an unreliable witness 'apparently reluctant to testify against his son." YA THINK?
Judge Brooks determined that the past assaults AND COVER-UPS were relevant to the case and would be allowed to be admitted into evidence during the trial by the prosecution. Also, there were no witnesses that would be kept from testifying due to 'pastoral privilege', because at the time of the historical child sexual abuse...the Duggars did not belong to a formal church. There was no formal organization or 'pastor', so there was no implied 'privilege'. (dun dun DUUUUNNNN)
The 12 jurors and 4 alternates were seated November 30, 2021. The trial started on December 1, 2021.
Along with testimony from many of the local authorities and Federal agents who conducted the investigations, a former employee of the car dealership was called as a witness who recounted a conversation that Josh had with a Jim Holt about setting up partitions on computers and laptops and how that said partitions would need to be accessed in person and couldn't be reached remotely.
During the trial, there was other evidence submitted by the prosecution, including other content that Duggar downloaded prior to the CSAM that had landed him in jail. There were r**e focused videos that were downloaded then deleted.
One of the most memorable witnesses for the prosecution was a woman named Bobye Holt, Jim Holt's wife. The Holts, along with about five or six other families, were in the informal 'church' that the Duggars worshiped within their collective homes in the early aughts. (Remember, holding services in the home as opposed in an organized church is a common trait of Quiverfull families.) Jim Bob and Michelle had been friends with Jim and Bobye Holt for about 35 years.
Remember how Josh's defense attorneys didn't want any mention about their client's prior history of sexual assault and tried to claim 'pastoral privilege' to keep witnesses off the stand?
Bobye Holt was the reason why.
Bobye Holt testified that Josh had confessed to her about molesting multiple underage girls as a teenager in 2003. She offered graphic details of the conversations and noted that Josh had confessed to touching girls at least ten years younger than him at the time of the assaults he was speaking with her about.
Remember, at the time of this conversation, Josh is 15 years old.
Josh made these confessions while the Holts were allowing Josh to court their oldest daughter. The assaults that Dugger confessed to Mrs. Holt were in regards to a different set of girls than the ones he told his parents about.
THE HOLT GIRLS.
Duggar had confessed to his girlfriend's mother that while Jim and Bobye Holt were planning to marry off their eldest daughter to him, he had assaulted his girlfriend's younger sisters, plus admitting to the other times he had already told his parents about. When Mrs. Holt went to Jim Bob and Michelle to inform them of their son's confession, their response was 'they didn't want to hear it. The Church would fix Josh.' The courtship was ended by the Duggar elders. (It came out in a later lawsuit that Bobye Holt totally downplayed this relationship. Josh and her daughter were full on ENGAGED.)
The judge did remind the jury that Duggar was on trial ONLY for the two charges that had been brought before them as the prosecution rested their case.
Josh's lawyers put forth the defense that their client was innocent and someone else was framing him for these charges, an ex-employee of the dealership. They even tried to get brother Jed on the stand to testify that this ex-employee was responsible for placing the files on Josh's laptop and/or placing a thumb drive on the computer in question to create a remote connection. And wasn't it convenient that the ex-employee in question was already a registered sex offender?
Judge Brooks shot that down fairly quickly.
However the computer expert the defense did have on the stand said that the prosecution witnesses were all incorrect and that such a partition could be accessed remotely by another party. In light of that testimony, the prosecution recalled one of their witnesses, who both demonstrated creating a Linux partition on a computer provided by the court and reiterated that there was no way that a remote connection to it could be created by someone of Duggar's skill level. He would need to be at the computer in order to access said partition.
The Verdict: Joshua James Duggar was found unanimously guilty of two counts of possessing child sex abuse images. He is currently awaiting sentencing, which will happen on May 25, 2022. A delay was granted from the original April 20th sentencing date, requested by the defense due to COVID restrictions messing with scheduled meetings, but they supposedly also used the delay time to look for more information to attempt to file an appeal for their client.
Smuggar faces up to 20 40 years in prison, fines totaling up to $500,000 for both counts and must be permanently registered as a sex offender.
5/18/22 EDIT: The two counts actually are 20 years per count. The Federal sentencing guidelines for sentencing a first time offender with this conviction is 20 years. The max sentence is 40 years; the Feds are asking for an additional 10 years over the recommended sentence, which would be 30 years. Still under the Federal max, but definitely more than the recommended guidelines.
Wife Anna is staying with her husband and has linked to plans his attorney has made to try and appeal the conviction on her Instagram. She gave birth to her and Josh's seventh child, Madyson, in October of 2021, just before the trial. It is reported that she and her children are living in a renovated warehouse on Jim Bob and Michelle's property while awaiting Josh's sentencing. In order to fund his defense Josh and Anna sold their 'dream' home, but it was not in good shape and was sold for well below the $799,000 asking price.
Josh's *ahem* MISDEEDS can affect the family as a whole in another way due to this case: how this is possible I do not know, but Arkansas is one of two states (PA being the other) that do not allow children to be homeschooled if there is a registered sex offender in the household or is a regular visitor to the household. (I KNOW, RIGHT!???? Why is this not everywhere? Home states of NY and MA, I am side-eyeing you hard right now.)
If Josh is given less than the full sentence (a likely chance as a first time convicted felon), then when he is released from prison, there will still be minor children on the Duggar compound. And as per the laws of the State of Arkansas, All minor children in the combined Duggar household will be required to attend a school outside of the home so as to comply with state regulations for regular contact with mandatory reporters as long as Josh resides in the home. "Given their relative isolation, homeschooled children are more vulnerable to exploitation."
Ain't that a kick in the head? Look at Arkansas, doing something right.
On May 11th, the prosecution and defense both submitted their sentencing memorandums to Judge Brooks. This document outlines what they believe the defendant deserves as a sentence for his convicted crimes.
The defense's memo was 30 pages long, asking for a sentence of five years due to the lack of prior criminal history. It also included letters from Duggar's wife Anna, family members including his mother Michelle, family friends and neighbors, asking the court to 'have mercy' on Duggar, as he was a good person and had supported 'a poor widow' financially and spiritually during his arraignment and trial. (Oh. Whoopdeedoo. Did she have kids he could potentially groom? YEAH I SAID IT, YOU WERE ALL THINKING IT DON'T LIE.)
The prosecution's memo was far shorter: they asked only for the judge to consider the severity of the crimes committed and requested an additional ten years over the twenty year maximum. They only submitted two victim impact letters in the body of their memo: from one of the children in the CASM Duggar was caught with and that child's father on how Duggar's crimes have affected their family.
Current Status: The Quiverfull movement's heavy lean into the idea of the patriarchal head of household has led to many women and children raised in the Quiverfull doctrine leaving and rejecting it. They have also written articles exposing the high levels of physical, emotional and sexual abuse committed in Quiverfull households and call the movement a cult.
After 19 Kids and Counting was pulled off the air, TLC tried to continue with Jill & Jessa: Counting On, which at first featured only Jill, Jessa, and their families, but quickly expanded to cover the rest of the Duggar siblings as well as returning Jim Bob and Michelle to TV. With the reintroduction of the majority of the family, the show's name was changed to Counting On.
Jill's husband Derek was fired by TLC in 2017 after making transphobic comments about fellow TLC star, Jazz Jennings and her show I am Jazz, detailing her journey as a trans teenager. He tried to plead 'religious beliefs' but nope fired so fired. Derek has also made accusations that Jim Bob was withholding paychecks and money from family members, including his wife, Jill.
Four of the Duggar sisters: Jinger, Jill, Joy-Anna and Jessa filed a civil suit against the city of Springdale, Washington County, various public officials and the publishers of InTouch Weekly in 2017 for revealing their identities. It also accused the Springdale Police of being in cahoots with InTouch.
Counting On ran for 10 seasons, until Josh once again derailed the family fame train by getting arrested for his CSAM possession in 2021.
Jim Bob recently decided to beef with Paul Caldwell, the pastor of the Lighthouse Baptist Church, the congregation where the Duggars were recently attending. Caldwell's daughter Kendra is married to Joe Duggar. Jim Bob at one point had purchased or was paying for a home for Joe's in-laws, but after Josh's first sexual abuse scandal, the Caldwells were forced to move in with Kendra and Joe.
The conflict is related to Caldwell insisting on holding full services during COVID-19, even after Gov. Asa Hutchinson mandated that large gatherings shouldn't be held. Oh, it wasn't because Jim Bob was being responsible. He was trying to save the family image and thought it would be a bad look to be attending services in defiance of the mandate while Josh was under investigation. Jim Bob slandered Caldwell and stole about 85% of his congregation out from under him. This wasn't the first time either: Jim Bob has done this several times over the years. It's considered a Duggar M.O. to join a congregation, cause some sort of drama then leave, taking a fair number of people with them.
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
disclaimer: I do believe in a higher power out there in the cosmos (I choose to call it 'God', you good sistren can call it whatever it is you want to). Be a good person. Treat others how you want to be treated. DO NOT LET SOME FLASHY ASS GUY ON THE RADIO/TV TELL YOU WHAT TO BELIEVE. Or one who stands in front of you in a pulpit on Sundays either. The best lesson I got out of my years of Christian captivity (oop, education) was the one that my mother really didn't want me to have: QUESTION EVERYTHING. The Bible is a book, claiming to be the Word of God but written by FALLIBLE HUMAN MEN. It has been messed with multiple times and fashioned to fit what a small group of people (white men) WANTED it to say. You're allowed to challenge it. As a matter of fact, it's your duty to.
tl;dr: Matthew 7: 3-5
Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye...