Josh Duggar has been convicted of receiving and possessing material that depicts the sexual abuse of children, a decision that provides a moment of consolation for Christian victims and advocates fighting against abuse coverup.
Duggar, the oldest sibling in the Christian homeschooling family made famous by the reality show 19 Kids and Counting, was taken into custody after the federal jury delivered the guilty verdict at a court in Arkansas on Thursday. He faces up to 40 years in prison.
“For everyone who was abused within their households or in their religious communities where nothing was done, where the male was given a second chance, where there was some excuse or minimization used, seeing Josh Duggar go to prison gives them some vindication or maybe some hope that the right result can happen,” said Boz Tchividjian, a sexual abuse attorney and advocate who founded GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment).
“But the right result happened not because the faith community, not the family, or even the church, rose up and said, ‘Absolutely not. We cannot tolerate this type of crime.’”
Duggar’s conviction comes from material that federal investigators found on his computer at the car lot where he worked in May 2019. One investigator said the images of young children were the worst he had seen in his career.
Knowing Duggar’s history and seeing family and church leaders come to his defense, some Christians have suggested he could have had a different trajectory if he was held accountable or given necessary treatment earlier.
“I am grateful he was found guilty and will be put away where he can’t hurt anyone, but it is hard to feel jubilation,” tweeted Jacob Denhollander, who advocates for victims along with his wife, Rachael, and grew up one of 13 siblings in “the same homeschooled circles as the Duggars.”
“There is so much harm that has been done in this situation and in this family. I pray for further restoration, repentance, and healing.”
Josh Duggar molested underage girls when he was a teen. The news of his misconduct became public in 2015, when he lost his place on the family’s TLC show and his job with the Family Research Council. He went on to also confess to infidelity and to porn addiction in his marriage.
At the trial, judges permitted testimony about the abuse that took place when Josh Duggar was 15. A church friend told the court that the Duggars invited her and her husband over to their house at the time and Josh Duggar confessed to inappropriately touching four girls, including a five-year-old who sat on his lap during Bible study.
Back in 2003, Church leaders agreed to address the issue by sending Josh Duggar to an Arkansas training program through Gothard’s Institute for Basic Life Principles. Months later, Jim Bob Duggar said he notified a friend in law enforcement, also a church elder, of the incidents, but he didn’t take it any further. (That officer went to prison in 2012 for 10 counts of distributing, possessing, or viewing material depicting child sex abuse.) When the incidents came up again in 2006, Josh Duggar made a statement to police, but no charges were filed.
In a pretrial hearing, Jim Bob Duggar said he couldn’t remember the details of what his son had confessed as a teenager and called the case “sealed” since Josh was a juvenile at the time. Two of Jim Bob’s daughters, Josh’s sisters, had come forward in 2015 as his victims.
The defense argued against permitting testimony from Jim Bob Duggar and the church friend, saying it should fall under clergy privilege, but the court disagreed. In the ruling allowing testimony around Josh Duggar’s abuse as a teen, the judge wrote, “The Court found Mr. Duggar’s selective lapse in memory to be not credible; he was obviously reluctant to testify against his son.”
Author and blogger Shelia Gregoire said the case reminded her of a biblical story.
“When Jim Bob took the stand last week and couldn’t recall the abuse, I thought of King David,” said Gregoire in an interview with CT, referencing the story of Amnon’s rape of Tamar.
“On a broader scale, we see repeatedly the evangelical world choosing to side with abusers over the abuse… it stems from one simple belief: All men struggle with lust; it’s every man’s battle,” Gregoire wrote on her blog, where she chronicles and corrects evangelical teachings on sex and marriage.
During a widespread evangelical reckoning around abuse and the church’s response, pastors are paying attention to the Duggar verdict and implicaitons for their ministry.
“If there’s any beauty coming out of these ashes of this Duggar trial—other than with regard to victims seeing some hope—it might be for a moment in time where at least pastors who are paying attention go, ‘Wow, I want to learn [about responding to sexual abuse],’” said Tchividjian. “Not because they don’t want to get sued. It’s not about risk management. It’s about loving children and honoring them.”
According to the Associated Press, the federal investigation against Duggar was prompted by a Little Rock detective who found images depicting sexual abuse of children as young as toddlers being shared by a computer traced to him.
The defense in the case argued that someone else had acquired and viewed the images on Josh Duggar’s device. Experts said the technology used to set up the program had been set up with Duggar’s password, a version of which was once associated with the Duggar family Instagram account.
Judge Timothy Brooks said sentencing will take place in about four months.
