The Duggars Respond to Reports That Josh Duggar Was Accused of Child Molestation

[SAVINGRACE]

I wish I (and you) were free of all temptation.
I wish I (and you) were free of any weakness.
I wish I(and you)were free of sin.
I wish I(and you) were to be beyond any future sin.
I wish that all of us will have redemption and forgiveness for our many faults and failures.
I wish and pray that I will rise above the comments and judgments about the Duggers.

There is a difference between sin and a crime. For most of us, our sins are not crimes in the sense that we can go to jail for. That we can be arrested for and jailed for. Mind you spending eternity in hell is worse than jail.

I honestly believe that Josh was molested as a child by someone he knew/trusted. Very rare for a 14yo to commit such a crime.

He, his siblings he molested and the other children he molested are ALL victims.

His parents are definitely hiding something.

 

[Walking_Home]

Here are more quotes from the police report that suggest it’s not as simple as “the victims forgave him and moved on”:

As I noted in my prior post, the report is posted on the In Touch website.

Here’s one quote from an interview with an actual victim:

Later from the same interview:

So at least ONE victim stated that she did not totally trust her abuser. And obviously was still upset about what happened years later, even if she had forgotten the details.

Also, this quote, from the interview of another victim, puts the Duggars obsessions with side hugs, including between sibs, in a more disturbing light:

Oh, and BTW, this is what the supposedly chastened, remorseful Josh Duggar stated on national TV during one of the show episodes, according to US weekly:

Quote:
In the video, Duggar, 27, is seen talking about a cinema visit he was due to take with his then-fiancee Anna Duggar before they married…Josh’s siblings Jana and John David Duggar were selected to chaperone, in what the reality star described as a “double date.”

---

It turned my stomach — to see that. And yes – the whole lot – who knew/knows of the abuse in the soul of this family – and went ahead putting on/continuing the TV show – is disgusting.

 

[Dawnia]

There is a difference between sin and a crime. For most of us, our sins are not crimes in the sense that we can go to jail for. That we can be arrested for and jailed for. Mind you spending eternity in hell is worse than jail.

I honestly believe that Josh was molested as a child by someone he knew/trusted. Very rare for a 14yo to commit such a crime.

He, his siblings he molested and the other children he molested are ALL victims.

His parents are definitely hiding something.

I was trying to look up stats, but didn’t have much luck.

I did run across an article from last year about a 12 year old in Canada who did far more than grope his younger sisters who is dealing with the legal system. The expert cited in this article thinks it’s pretty common and shouldn’t be treated like other sex abuse.

“Cases of sibling-on-sibling incest are actually pretty common," said Cantor, clinical psychologist and senior scientist at the Centre for Addition and Mental Health in Toronto.

Cantor said there’s also a predictable amount of sexual experimentation among children, often with siblings.

“It’s very, very common and there’s no evidence outside of real coercion that innocent sex play, including between siblings, is at all a problem."

He appears to be saying that sex between siblings is normal.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

I wish I (and you) were free of all temptation.
I wish I (and you) were free of any weakness.
I wish I(and you)were free of sin.
I wish I(and you) were to be beyond any future sin.
I wish that all of us will have redemption and forgiveness for our many faults and failures.
I wish and pray that I will rise above the comments and judgments about the Duggers.

I really wish you’d go back and read what I’ve posted about child sexual abuse, then read up on it on your own so you know I’m not making unfounded claims. Read the posts from victims on here to see how it’s affected their lives. Think back on all the instances of priests getting caught, repenting, getting shuffled to a new parish and then starting the cycle of abuse all over again. Child sexual abuse is not like other weaknesses and sins. It’s not like vandalizing, stealing, underage drinking or even adultery. Child sexual abusers are more like serial rapists and serial killers. They don’t do it just once and their crimes are not self-contained. In other words, if I vandalize your car, that doesn’t make you more likely to go out and vandalize your neighbor’s care. However, if you Uncle Ed molested you when you were a kid, you are more likely to molest children. Prayer, forgiveness, mercy and reconciliation don’t make it stop and they don’t make it go away. Turning a blind eye to it, minimizing it and not getting the proper counseling for the victims and the perpetrator are the things you do if you want it to go on and on and on.

 

[Walking_Home]

I was trying to look up stats, but didn’t have much luck.

I did run across an article from last year about a 12 year old in Canada who did far more than grope his younger sisters who is dealing with the legal system. The expert cited in this article thinks it’s pretty common and shouldn’t be treated like other sex abuse.

He appears to be saying that sex between siblings is normal.

---

Don’t think he is saying incest between siblings is normal behavior. From the article – sibling incest/abuse is linked to a dysfunctional family environment.

Of course – it needs to be taken into consideration – that a “regular pedophile” – also went through teenage years.

Cantor said while a “regular pedophile” is motivated by a sexual preference for children, sibling incest tends to occur inside very chaotic households. It usually comes together with physical abuse and neglect, with parents providing little or no oversight of their children.

“When it’s sibling-on-sibling abuse, usually its part of a larger anti-social pattern within a family with many different kinds of problems."

 

[KendraDZ1902]

Raises hand. I called them liars because they DID lie in the police report. They completely contradicted each other. One of them was lying. One was telling the truth. They forgot to get their stories straight beforehand.

That is a verifiable fact.

That makes me question everything that has ever come out of their mouths.

:sad_yes:

 

[KendraDZ1902]

One thing I’ve noticed about threads concerning exposure of sexual misconduct is that if the perp is “one of ours”, i.e., Christian responses are all about the media is trying to discredit Christians, we should forgive, blah, blah. If it’s not a Christian, their sin is due to their secular lifestyle & nothing they’ve ever done in their life counts and Hell is too good for them.

Anyone can be a child molester, religious or not, Democrat or Republican, young or old. As for the fact that Josh Duggar was 13/14 when he did this, the Church considers the age of reason (able to tell right from wrong) to be eight. Many states try 14 year-olds as adults for serious offenses like rape and murder.
So his age cuts no age cuts no ice as far as I’m concerned especially since he had the advantage of growing up with two parents who taught him right from wrong.

As far as forgiveness, that’s up to his victims, not us. Some of those nearest and dearest to me have been victims of molestation. I don’t believe anybody does it just once. Yeah, yeah, “studies have shown” that molesters have a low recidivism rate. That’s nice. I still don’t want them (including Josh Duggar) around my kids.

Lastly, I don’t know if he disclosed his past to the Family Resource Council but if he didn’t that was totally dishonest and a terrible disservice to the organization.

:clapping:

 

[eatpraylove11]

Being a victim of child molestation, it doesn’t go away for the victim. Mine happened 18 years ago. I saw him the other day. My best friend’s grandmother passed away and he was there. Seeing him made me stop in my tracks and had to internalize my anxiety.
Sure, let them repent and be forgiven by God, they still shouldn’t be around children and their victims will always remember. I would have to stop having sex with me husband sometimes because of what I went through.

This should not be let go.

I totally agree with you.

Imagine being one of his sisters that he violated, then having to see him day after day, and having to pretend like it never happened.

People who have not experienced the pain of being sexually abused do not understand.

Pedophiles come in many shapes and forms, it’s just hard to see it. That is not something that can be “cured” by prayer alone.

 

[eatpraylove11]

apparently no place for forgiveness either.

He’s now 27. The question is whether he’s repented, sought forgiveness, and made restitution. It sounds like all of this was done. His family has moved on. Why can’t others?

because the pain of the girls he molested still lives on

 

[eatpraylove11]

This is one of the worst things I have ever read on here. EVER. I don’t think I will be visiting these forums for a long time because of this. Things like “he seemed to have handled it well, etc.”
Handled it well?
Josh tried to cover it up (read the police reports and look at the timeline of the events), made jokes on camera about being from Arkansas (youtube, look it up), and he never wanted people to know and wanted people to treat him like he wasn’t a wolf in sheep clothing. His apology was all about himself and had a glossing of words of what he really did. I don’t call that handling it well.

The parents are negligent for not protecting at least 4 daughters from a sexual predator. They say they are so concerned about the girls not solo dating as to persevere their chastity. Yeah I guess that only is a concern for the Duggar family if it is not going on under their own roof otherwise how do you think they would have treated any male who was not related to them doing this over a period of years to 4/5 of their young daughters?

Are you even serious? It isn’t like this Josh Duggar guy had a consenting girlfriend his age or tried drinking or drugs. This is something else entirely and very abnormal and wrong, in the criminal reports it was called forcible. He was taking something from someone that was never his to take. And he was doing it over and over to his own sisters. That is not something to gloss over. EVER. That is sexual predator of non consenting young girls, most of who are related directly to him.

Words matter. He is a pedophile and apparently has a thing for incest that started in his teens, he preyed upon easy targets within his own family, little girls. There is a pattern.

Who are you suggesting has moved on? His victims who will suffer for the rest of their life from these repeated incidents and their parents not taking the proper steps to help? How about other children he will have access to, that is probably what Josh will “move on” to.

He abused for years (it wasn’t a one time incident) 4 out of the 5 sisters he had access to, mostly while they slept. They were all very young 12 - 4, yeah FOUR years of age. One particular incident in his criminal records was when he was reading the (just barely not a toddler) young girl a story. Now he has a daughter that age and will have more.

His apology was typically self centered and focused on “his” life, how he was messing up his life and was all about him. Nothing mentioned about the 5 girls who lives he destroyed who were preyed upon while they slept in their own home for at least a period of over 1,000 nights. He had continued access to them until he moved out and then they all still had to have frequent contact with him to this day.

The parents made more little girls for him to have access to while living under their roof. The girls were forced to play along and pretend it never happened if they wanted to be a part of the Duggar family, smiles for the camera, etc. Can you imagine how horrible that is for the girls? Have you ever been sexually abused as a young child or know anyone who has been? The victims don’t “just get over it and move on”. Less so when it happens repeatedly and those around them don’t really seem to care and they are not removed from the situation and given a voice.

This is why people leave the church and God because anyone who gives the “ok” and “let’s move on from this” to child molesters, pedophiles, and individuals who abuse others with incest for years is NOT a place or God any normal decent people with a real conscious ever want to be associated with. It is horrific.

:clapping::yup:

 

[Memaw]

I heard this on the news radio on the way home, im still wondering, how and why did the media get ahold of this? If he was 14 yo at the time, statue of limitations is long gone, so why would police even be involved? Plus, the family said he had been forgiven long ago for these actions…again, how and why did the media get ahold of this? Sorta feels like maybe someone wanted this story to get out there and probably has an ulterior agenda.

Something stinky about this imo, Somehow I dont think we are being given the entire story.

I agree, Just about the only decent program on TV and they wanted to blow it out of the water. God Bless, Memaw

 

[LongingSoul]

Josh Duggars father-in-law is rationalising his behaviour on their family blog.

“Many times it is simply lack of opportunity or fear of consequences that keep us from falling into grievous sin even though our fallen hearts would love to indulge the flesh. We should not be shocked that this occurred in the Duggar’s home, we should rather be thankful to God if we have been spared such, and pray that he would keep us and our children from falling.”

seewalds.com/grace-greater-than-our-sin/

Is he saying that all males would be child sex abusers if they knew they could get away with it?

What God do they actually follow??

 

[Dawnia]

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Don’t think he is saying incest between siblings is normal behavior. From the article – sibling incest/abuse is linked to a dysfunctional family environment.

Of course – it needs to be taken into consideration – that a “regular pedophile” – also went through teenage years.

That’s true in regards to abuse, but towards the bottom of the article he distinguishes abuse from sexual experimentation. He doesn’t seem to have a problem with sex between siblings as long as it’s not coerced.

Cantor said there’s also a predictable amount of sexual experimentation among children, often with siblings.

“It’s very, very common and there’s no evidence outside of real coercion that innocent sex play, including between siblings, is at all a problem."

Cantor said the line between playing doctor and sexual abuse is hard to draw. Coercion is an important factor, as is a family’s overall psychological health.

 

[Dawnia]

Josh Duggars father-in-law is rationalising his behaviour on their family blog.

“Many times it is simply lack of opportunity or fear of consequences that keep us from falling into grievous sin even though our fallen hearts would love to indulge the flesh. We should not be shocked that this occurred in the Duggar’s home, we should rather be thankful to God if we have been spared such, and pray that he would keep us and our children from falling.”

seewalds.com/grace-greater-than-our-sin/

Is he saying that all males would be child sex abusers if they knew they could get away with it?

What God do they actually follow??

I really hope that isn’t what he’s saying.

 

[agnes_therese]

Imagine being one of his sisters that he violated, then having to see him day after day, and having to pretend like it never happened.

Hard enough in a “normal” family – imagine having to do that in front of a TV audience!

 

[ToeInTheWater]

Josh Duggars father-in-law is rationalising his behaviour on their family blog.

“Many times it is simply lack of opportunity or fear of consequences that keep us from falling into grievous sin even though our fallen hearts would love to indulge the flesh. We should not be shocked that this occurred in the Duggar’s home, we should rather be thankful to God if we have been spared such, and pray that he would keep us and our children from falling.”

seewalds.com/grace-greater-than-our-sin/

Is he saying that all males would be child sex abusers if they knew they could get away with it?

Well, technically Michael Seewald ISN’T Josh’s father-in-law, he’s the father-in-law of his sister, Jessa (Duggar) Seewald. Not sure exactly what that makes him in relation to Josh.

I read his essay and while it DOES echo the “haters out to get them” and “don’t judge a repentant sinner” mantras of most of the Duggar defenders, it actually is a little more reasonable than the statements from the Duggars themselves.

The victims of Josh’s actions should not be lost in all of this. Sadly, this type of thing is all too common. Victims of sexual abuse of any kind often suffer greatly for many years as a result of these sins. We should not downplay the seriousness of these offenses particularly, nor gloss over the pain and confusion they often bring, sometimes for a lifetime.

At least he DOES acknowledge the pain and suffering of the victims. And I must admit that, although I’ve avoided speculating who the victims were, the Seewald’s actually commenting on this at all and mentioning the victims, really makes me wonder if their daughter-in-law Jessa was one of them. If that IS the case, I do hope she had some (name removed by moderator)ut into this statement or at least knew it was going to be posted. Because otherwise…

considers purchasing tissues and barf bags

God have mercy on us…

And I actually do agree with this part:

"There are others that see this episode as a result of sheltering and repressing human desires. They think that had he access to sex education by Planned Parenthood, been allowed to watch edgy Hollywood films, been encouraged to experimentation with a girlfriend, or gotten free condoms from the local school nurse, then none of this would have happened…Josh didn’t sin because he was repressed, he sinned because like all of us he is a sinner.

And the responses to the essay do reveal that SOME of the critics are politically motivated, many of them run along the lines of “you guys are such hypocrites, you condemn gay people in loving relationships, and you defend a guy who might have molested your OWN daughter in law?”

However, I don’t see that as proof that “all of this is politically motivated”, more as proof that whatever credibility the Duggars and their allies had in being able to influence people’s views regarding conservative social causes, is shredded.

Also, I really put the Duggars themselves largely at fault for whatever additional pain and suffering the victims are going through right now. They’re the ones who chose to put their family in the spotlight as celebrities, KNOWING this history lurked in the background, knowing there was a risk it would become public.

ETA: Also, what I forgot to note last night when I posted all those quotes from the victims, is that Josh himself was never interviewed by the investigators who interviewed his sisters. His parents refused to let him be interviewed, even though they let their daughters go through the additional trauma of telling their stories to strangers.

All of this makes it pretty obvious to me that the Duggars put Josh’s welfare ABOVE that of his victims, which is pretty disgusting. Was it simply because he was a favorite child? Or does it reveal their general patriarchal mindset that men are more valuable than women?

 

[Gordon_Sims]

Josh Duggars father-in-law is rationalising his behaviour on their family blog.

“Many times it is simply lack of opportunity or fear of consequences that keep us from falling into grievous sin even though our fallen hearts would love to indulge the flesh. We should not be shocked that this occurred in the Duggar’s home, we should rather be thankful to God if we have been spared such, and pray that he would keep us and our children from falling.”

seewalds.com/grace-greater-than-our-sin/

Is he saying that all males would be child sex abusers if they knew they could get away with it?

What God do they actually follow??

That’s an absolutely disgusting and irresponsible blog post. He clearly has no clue what he’s talking about. And that quote is far worse than the rationalization and minimizing of Josh’s actions that have been going on in this thread. In other words, he’s saying it’s not a matter of boys being boys, but instead Josh simply did what all men would naturally love to do. It’s attitudes like that that allow incidents like this to go unreported.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

That’s an absolutely disgusting and irresponsible blog post. He clearly has no clue what he’s talking about. And that quote is far worse than the rationalization and minimizing of Josh’s actions that have been going on in this thread. In other words, he’s saying it’s not a matter of boys being boys, but instead Josh simply did what all men would naturally love to do. It’s attitudes like that that allow incidents like this to go unreported.

Gordon, I’ve agreed with almost everything you’ve posted about this, but I actually didn’t take what Michael Seewald wrote as a claim that all men have natural urges to commit sexual assault against children. I took it as a really poorly phrased way of making the “there but for the grace of God go I” argument that many Christians make when people fall into sin.

I am still disturbed by Seewald going public, even though some of his comments were actually reasonable, at least if he did so without any (name removed by moderator)ut or at least knowledge from his daughter-in-law, Jessa, that he was planning on doing so.

Even if Jessa wasn’t victimized herself, she must have been affected by the consequences Josh’s actions had on her sisters. Of course the show is heavily edited, but she has been fairly consistently portrayed as very engaged and caring when interacting with her sisters.

 

[masondoggy]

That’s an absolutely disgusting and irresponsible blog post. He clearly has no clue what he’s talking about. And that quote is far worse than the rationalization and minimizing of Josh’s actions that have been going on in this thread. In other words, he’s saying it’s not a matter of boys being boys, but instead Josh simply did what all men would naturally love to do. It’s attitudes like that that allow incidents like this to go unreported.

As awful as it is, I really suspect that in that culture, sexual abuse is quietly accepted because they do look at it as “boys being boys”. They can’t help themselves. They don’t see it as the horrific, unacceptable offense that most of us see it as. To them, this is normal male behavior. THAT is a scary attitude and completely explains why their circle has such a huge problem with abuse.

 

[Burt_Macklin]

As awful as it is, I really suspect that in that culture, sexual abuse is quietly accepted because they do look at it as “boys being boys”. They can’t help themselves. They don’t see it as the horrific, unacceptable offense that most of us see it as. To them, this is normal male behavior. THAT is a scary attitude and completely explains why their circle has such a huge problem with abuse.

If they saw it that way they wouldn’t have reported the crime to the police or sent Josh to counseling. Jim Bob seems to have made the mistakes that he did - like reporting to a friend - because he wanted to protect Josh from more serious offenders.