Josh Duggar is perhaps most well known for being part of the reality television series 19 Kids and Counting. He was the oldest of the 19. What is perhaps not as well known is the news that his child pornography trial just finished on Dec 9, 2021 and he was found to be very guilty.
If you are familiar with him, then that outcome will not be a surprise.
What is the back story here, who are the Duggar family?
Josh Duggar, now 33, was the oldest of the Arkansas Duggar family. They were the subject of a show called 19 Kids and Countin. It aired on TLC between 2008-2015, and followed this deeply religious family of 19, yes 19 kids.
Well OK, now 20. The show might have ended, but the breeding continued.
You might wonder why they would agree to this. The answer is that it was a platform to make their pitch to the ungodly wider world that their way of life is best for raising healthy, godly children. In one phrase – religious propaganda.
Why so Many Kids?
They are part of what is known as the Quiverfull movement. This is a belief that encourages couples to breed as fast as possible and avoid any form of birth control.
When courting they are chaperoned, but once married they revert to full bunny mode and churn out kids as fast as possible. This is because they believe that the only reason for sex is to make babies. Any sex that is just for enjoyment is, from their viewpoint, perverted.
This micro-culture is also very male dominated. Women must submit to the men because they are supposedly in charge.
The Duggers, with their 20 kids, deny that they are part of the Quiverfull movement. However, their website contains an article that justifies all the kids by citing Psalms 127:3-5 …
“Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: & the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them”
That quote is literally where the Quiverfull movement gets its name from. In other words, if the shoe fits, and all that.
Why such denial of the obvious?
Religious propaganda – the term “Quiverfull” has negative connotations, so they reject it.
How Big is this Movement?
You might perhaps wonder how many embrace this philosophy. Back in 2006 The Nation published an article about the movement titled “Arrows For the War“. They estimated the numbers to be “thousands to the low tens of thousands“. That however was back in 2006. Since they strive to vigorously breed as fast as possible who knows how many there are now 15 years later.
One other point of interest. Quiverfull folks are strongly inclined towards homeschooling their kids. It is not universal, but is a very common practise. On the show the Duggers were very much into homeschooling. The goal is to shelter and protect their kids from us, the unwashed evil unrighteous ones. We might corrupt them by asking awkward questions, encourage them to rebel and challenge authority, or even expose them to ungodly evil stuff such as “evolution”, critical thinking, and common sense. (Shudders, oh the horror).
Ex-Quiverfull
Many do quit this cult.
The folks who leave are deeply critical of what they experienced inside. Vyckie Garrison, who spent 16 years living this nightmare and had seven kids, left, declared herself to now be an atheist, and labelled her ex-husband a tyrant.
She is not a lone voice, others describe their years in the movement as “disastrous.”
The Early Josh Duggar Scandal, Coverup, and Exposure
Before we get into Josh’s latest encounter with the law, there is also a bit of history you should also be aware of.
Via an article published in the Washington Post in 2015 we can glean the details. What follows is a very brief summary.
What came to light as late as 2006, because the family had covered it all up, was the revelation that Josh had been sexually molesting five different underage girls, four of his sisters and one outsider, a babysitter. This happened in 2002 and 2003. Josh was aged 14 at the time. Clueless about what to do, his parents turned to Church elders. They in turn suggested that Josh should go to a Christian treatment program.
So he got proper help … right?
Nope.
The councillor was not in any way certified or qualified, but instead is described as a “guy they knew in Little Rock who was remodelling a building,”.
Jesus wept, this was a blindingly obvious recipe for disaster.
The counselling centre was a building that had been bought by Hobby Lobby and then passed to televangelist Bill Gothard for a “Bible-based rehabilitation program”. Both Gothard and his Basic Life principles have been promoted many times by the Duggars.
Was it good, was Gothard a decent guy trying to make a difference?
No, he was forced to resign from his own Institute in Basic Life Principles following allegations of sexual harassment, molestation, and failing to report child abuse in 2014. As many as 34 women who worked for Gothard have claimed that he harassed them.
The Duggars put Josh in this guy’s hands.
Could it get any worse?
Yes, yes, it could.
Upon returning from counselling, the family put Josh in contact with a state trooper, Officer Joseph Truman Hutchens. His response was to simply give Josh a good telling off, and left it at that. This officer is currently serving a 56-year prison sentence in an Arkansas Department of Correction facility for child pornography offences.
Yes, once again, Jesus wept.
By the time police became properly aware in 2006, the statute of limitations has expired, so they were powerless to act.
What happened after that?
By about 2013, Josh, then aged 25, is married and moves with his new quiverfull submissive wife and children from Arkansas to Washington to take a job with the Family Research Council to be their executive director.
Did the FRC do any background checks at all?
Apparently nothing robust, so Josh is the guy they chose to lead their “Family Values” mission.
In 2015, when the story of Josh sexually molesting five different underage girls as a teenager became a big news story, he issued a formal apology and resigned from the Family Research Council. TLC also made a decision to pull the plug on “19 Kids and Counting” because this media exposure had branded it as toxic.
You know how this all plays out. He was so very sorry for his past mistakes, but he is now a new man, and Jesus has turned his life around, etc …
Yes, your inner skeptical alarm is of course blaring away right now because you know it is all just religious theatre.
Ashley Madison in 2015
Ashley Madison is an online dating site for people who are married.
You can indeed see exactly where this is now going.
Remember that hack of Ashley Madison back in 2015. Well guess whose name popped up as a subscriber and frequent visitor to the site?
Josh Duggar was revealed to have frequented the site.
Once that news was out, he brushed off his now familiar, “I am so sorry, so ashamed, but Jesus has made me a new man now” statement. I can only wonder if he gets frequent flyer points every time he rolls that out.
Reminder; he was an Ashley Madison member while executive director of the Family Research Council.
Josh Duggar and Child Porn
After quitting FRC, Josh moved on to selling cars.
They had traced his IP address as one that had been downloading child porn.
This was not your average normal porn, but instead was rather vile stuff.
Gerald Faulkner, a special agent involved, who examined the computer is quoted as follows …
“in the top five of the worst of the worst that I’ve ever had to examine”
Covenant Eyes
They also found on this computer a software package called “Covenant Eyes”. This is a Christian solution for people who have a porn addiction. The idea is that it monitors what you are doing. If it detects you accessing forbidden sites, it automatically alerts a trusted friend who is then supposed to reach out and help you. In his case it was his wife.
Obviously he had set this up to put her mind at rest.
Even this was a sham. He had set it up in a way that enabled him to access child porn without triggering it.
Trial and Conviction
The trial, originally scheduled for July, took place at the end of Nov 2021.
Josh claimed he was innocent and that he had not accessed the porn, and asserted that it must have been another employee. Via NBC we learn how that played out for him …
His activity was found in connection with an undercover investigation involving a file-sharing program, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Investigators geolocated the computer to Duggar’s car lot and then matched the timing of the image downloads to times Duggar was at the lot.
This includes times when Duggar was the “only paid employee on the lot,”
The trial concluded on Dec 9, 2021.
He now faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each count. Sentencing will take place next year.
One further unexpected twist
“But it’s just Josh, the other Duggars are fine upstanding godly citizens”.
Er … no.
Josh’s sister, the oldest girl, Jana Duggar, has just been charged with child endangerment. Her court date is set for Jan 10, 2022. She is not married and has no kids of her own.
To be wholly transparent here, her side of the story is that she was babysitting and the kid slipped out and got away. If true, then the issue is not malice, but rather incompetence. I guess it’s understandable, the kid must have realised that Jana was a Duggar and so needed to dig a tunnel and escape.
We only have her statement, we don’t actually know anything else at this point because the charges have been sealed.
Beyond her dismissal it does sound serious. If found guilty then she does face the possibility of up to three months in jail.
What happened to Josh, why was he like this?
Put aside all rosy thoughts regarding Quiverfull being fine decent upstanding godly people and instead embrace the reality of what they are really about. It’s a cult that nurtures a polished public image, but behind the shiny facade of happy smiley faces resides a culture of guilt, servitude, and sexual repression.
Bill Gothard, the Duggar’s disgraced go-to guy in time of trouble turned out to be a sexual predator of 34 women. He not only invented their homeschooling program the Durrars utilised, but also wrote “Counseling Sexual Abuse”. That can be distilled down to just this – “blame the victim”. The girls are told, “It happened because you encourage him, did not dress modestly, etc…”.
Keeping everybody isolated from proper education and real-world social interactions leads to deeply flawed psychological outcomes. This is a movement that asserts the supremacy of men over women and promotes the idea that women are sexual property. Their only reason for women existing is to churn out babies and to be domestic servants for men. The women are conditioned to just obey and never question the authority of men. Each individual family is a mini-cult with the father as the cult leader.
This is not normal.
It not only nurtures a culture of abuse that gags the abused, but also leaves them utterly incapable of dealing with a sexual abuser in any meaningful way. It instead absolves the abuser and blames the victim.
This is not just a story about Josh.
Douglas Phillips, a leading light in the Quiverfull movement, is also a sexual abuser.
It’s the whole damn edifice.
The true is that this moral minority are really the immoral minority.
Meanwhile …
Jim Bob Duggar, the father of Josh, Jana, and 18 others, has announced that he is running for election to the Arkansas State Senate.
His platform?
He is running as a “family values” guy who is also pro-gun.
(If you have not already done so, then about here is perhaps the best place for you to proceed to facepalm).
Do you really want a guy who is incapable of looking after his own family, elected to look after yours?