On Friday, Fox News aired Megyn Kelly’s interview with two of Josh Duggar’s victims, his sisters Jessa and Jill. Though their brother molested five children — one of whom was five-years-old — the Duggar sisters stood up for their abuser, explaining that he is not a “child molester or a pedophile or a rapist” despite the fact that they were ten and twelve, respectively, when their brother sexually assaulted them.
“This is something we chose to do, nobody asked us to do this,” the now-22-year-old told Kelly. “If you go back and look at everything that people have seen in our lives – in television, you know – we’ve never claimed to be a perfect family.”
“I can speak out and I can say this and set the record straight here. Like in Josh’s case, he was a boy, a young boy in puberty and a little too curious about girls. And that got him into some trouble, ” Jessa explained. “And he made some bad choices, but really the extent of it was mild, inappropriate touching, on fully clothed victims, most of it while girls were sleeping.”
Of course, the girls were not “fully clothed” at all times when they were molested by their brother — at least according to Jim Bob Duggar in the Wednesday interview:
“There were a couple instances where he touched them under their clothes.”
“He knew in his mind, ‘My actions are wrong and I have bad intentions,’ but he was very sly,” Jessa explained. “Like the girls didn’t catch on. It was like, okay, if you catch the girl sleeping a quick feel or whatever…It was very subtle.”
The assertion that everyone was sleeping when Josh Duggar took sexual liberties with them, a narrative pushed heavily by the Christian Right in its desperation to defend the anti-gay hero, is also untrue as is revealed by Jim Bob Duggar’s account of the incident in police reports. One report notes that Josh abused his five-year-old victim in the laundry room and as he was reading to her, the child on his lap.
Rather than truly deal with the situation outside having a pedophile who is serving 56 years in prison give Josh a “stern talk” and “counseling” at a Christian center founded by a man who resigned after it was revealed he had been sexually grooming teens and young women, the Duggar parents simply did not allow Josh to be alone with the children, even disallowing common childhood games like hide and seek for fear that their son would continue to molest the kids if he found time to be alone with them.
These “amazing” safety measures, which would not have been necessary if Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar cared enough to truly deal with the issue, were praised by Jill and Jessa, who describe their abuse as “very mild.”
Jill Duggar says she hopes she “can set up the same safeguards” to defend against sexual predators living in the home as her parents did.
The true problem, according to Jessa and Jill Duggar, was not that their brother molested numerous children multiple times (including a kindergartener). The real issue is that the media had the nerve to reveal his crimes.
“When I heard the police report was released, I said they can’t do this to us,” Jill Duggar said, with Jessa adding that it was a shock to see their faces on a tabloid.
The sisters repeated their parents’ claims that In Touch‘s obtaining of the police reports through a Freedom of Information Act request was illegal — but this claim has been disputed by numerous legal authorities.
Under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, incident reports may be released, but names of juveniles and sexual assault victims must be redacted. This was, of course, done in each report that was released. Though the Duggars claim that Springdale Police Chief Kathy O’Kelley was bribed into releasing the report, or was carrying out a personal agenda by releasing it, the FOIA request was approved by City Attorney Ernest Cate.
“Although the alleged abuse took place in 2002, when Josh Duggar was 14 years old, the police report was compiled after he had turned 18 – so Cate said there was no basis for the case to be sealed,” Raw Story notes.
The Springdale police records were ordered to be destroyed by Judge Stacy Zimmerman, who was appointed by Duggar supporter and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Zimmerman claimed that the reports were covered under a statute exempting some juvenile records from the FOIA. Executive director of the Arkansas Press Association Tom Larimer said:
“However, that exemption does not cover records of concluded investigations when the names of the perpetrator and the victims are redacted and when the offender has reached adulthood, and in regard to which there are no court orders forbidding the release.”
It’s not surprising that Jessa and Jill Duggar would defend their brother’s horrendous crimes. After all, the family subscribes to a philosophy that teaches the victims are at fault if they are too “immodest” or are “out from their parents’ protection” — or if they have “evil friends.”
At the same time Josh Duggar, who has avoided the media since his actions were revealed, learned that all he needed to do was decide that God has forgiven him — and just like magic, guilt from even the act of sexually abusing a five-year-old child disappears.
The Duggar sisters have been re-victimized — but not by the media. Josh Duggar’s series of sexual assaults on children are not the actions of a little boy (he was 14 and 15) who “was a little too curious about girls.” These actions are those of a serial sexual predator. That the parents to defend him, and that his victims do so either of their own free will based upon their cult’s teachings or on behalf of their parents or brother is the true horror.
As children, because of their brother’s actions, they could not play hide-and-seek. There were locks on their doors to protect them from their brother. These women were never allowed to have a normal childhood because of what their brother did to them — and now they are pawns in a desperate crusade to somehow vindicate a monster.
Watch the sisters defend their brother, below:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fevkx229XBs?rel=0&showinfo=0&w=640&h=360]
Featured image via video screen capture
