Long before Donald Trump came down the Trump Tower escalator, the religious right seemed to have a nasty habit of picking some really bad people as heroes. Without a doubt, two of the worst pre-Trump examples were America’s most infamous babymakers, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. In 2015, it emerged that the oldest of their 19 children, Josh, had molested five girls while he was a teenager in 2002-03—including four of his younger sisters—and Jim Bob and Michelle dragged their feet in reporting it.

And yet, when this writer and others in the blogosphere and mainstream media pointed this out, we were pilloried for it. After all, if you were a regular viewer of 19 Kids and Counting on TLC, you saw a family that seemed to be the very model of wholesome Christian living. As the story went, those evil libruls just didn’t like that, and would do absolutely anything to tear them down. Indeed, someone I was dating at the time ruled out any prospect of us going any further because of my criticism of Jim Bob and Michelle. As she put it, I was “not only not building the kingdom of God,” but “actively working to tear it down.”

Well, what remained of that myth blew apart on May 5, when Josh was released on bail after pleading not guilty to federal charges of receiving and possessing child pornography. He’d been arrested on April 29, two years after a Little Rock police officer discovered images of child sex abuse material—some of which depicted kids as young as 12 years old—being downloaded to a computer at Josh’s used car dealership in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The subsequent two-year federal investigation by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations turned up a trove of over 200 images, some of which were extremely graphic.

At the hearing, HSI agent Gerald Faulkner revealed that Josh had installed a program called “Covenant Eyes” on his computer in order to help combat a porn addiction that he’d disclosed in 2015, when he admitted to trolling for affairs on Ashley Madison even though he was married. The program captured screenshots on his work computer and sent them to Anna, his wife, who would call him out if he was surfing inappropriate sites. However, according to Faulkner, Josh had installed a password-protected Linux network on his work computer, creating a portion of his hard drive that Covenant Eyes couldn’t track. It was there that Faulkner found what he described as one of the five worst cases of child porn he’d ever seen.

Watch more coverage here, from KFSM-TV in Fort Smith.

YouTube Video

In other words, Josh was so consumed by child porn that he was willing to actively evade an effort to help him get a handle on his addiction. It says a lot about how much he values his marriage and his six kids (with a seventh on the way), especially considering that several of the images depicted children young enough to be his kids. This makes the decision to grant him bail even more incomprehensible; After all, if he was actively evading Covenant Eyes, how can he be trusted to comply with his bail conditions?

As outrageous as this is, it’s even more so considering that it was completely preventable. Had Jim Bob and Michelle done their most basic duties as parents, it’s very likely that Josh would have never gone down the path that has him facing up to 40 years in federal prison if he’s convicted.

After all, we already know enough about the Duggars to know they deserve to be condemned for not merely making a mistake, but not making a decision they were legally required to make. Even if Jim Bob and Michelle wanted to keep Josh from getting a record after he admitted inappropriately touching his sisters in March 2002, experts are almost unanimous that inappropriate touching is not something that should be kept a secret. For instance, pediatrician and parenting expert William “Dr. Bill” Sears notes that when there is more than a three-year age difference between children engaging in genital play, it’s a sign that “one child is victimizing another,” and both victim and victimizer need professional counseling. Josh was three years older than Jill and four years older than Jessa.

It’s possible that the Duggars may not have initially known about the abuse, given the bubble in which they lived. But there was no defensible reason for Jim Bob and Michelle to sit on their hands in July 2002, when Josh told them he’d fondled a female friend of the family who was babysitting his younger siblings. And that means the third incident, in which Josh fondled his five-year-old sister, Joy, absolutely should have never happened.

As bad as that was, it turns out that this wasn’t just a case of catastrophically poor judgment. As much attention as In Touch Weekly got for turning the hot lights on the Duggars, a 2015 article by Inquisitr casts those findings in an even more disturbing light. Inquisitr’s Rita Fox did a deep dive into the Duggars’ living situation, and discovered information that showed Jim Bob and Michelle not only failed Josh, but failed all of their kids.

When Discovery Communications (now Discovery, Inc.) first discovered the Duggars in 2003-04, they were living in a three-bedroom, two-bath house in Fayetteville’s twin city, Springdale. The Duggars had lived there since 1993, when their clan comprised Jim Bob, Michelle, five-year-old Josh, three-year-old twins Jana and John-David, two-year-old Jill, and one-year-old Jessa. In the decade since then, Michelle had given birth to nine more kids. Two more were born in the time that Discovery Health filmed three specials about the family. Do the math—18 people were jammed into a house that was only built for six people, at most.

This created a smorgasbord of logistical problems. With just two baths, the kids had to take showers in shifts. Even then, the water heater wasn’t enough to handle the amount of dishwashing, laundry, and diaper changing needed to care for such a large family. But most seriously of all, with just three bedrooms, boys and girls had to sleep in the same room—and even share the same beds. In other words, the Duggars created a situation in which improper touching was easily able to happen if someone was inclined to do so. Indeed, according to a 2019 study by the University of Western Australia, overcrowding is associated with a 23-46% increase in the risk of child sexual abuse.

This situation was not just unsafe and unsanitary. It was also illegal. Springdale, like nearly all decent-sized cities, has occupancy limits written into all residential building permits. They spell out the maximum number of people who can live in a house, as well as the minimum square footage for a bedroom. Jim Bob and Michelle can’t plead ignorance. They are both licensed real estate professionals; indeed, Jim Bob is a fourth-generation real estate agent. All real estate professionals in Arkansas are required to know about occupancy limits. And yet, Jim Bob and Michelle simply ignored them.

To be fair, the Duggars began building the mansion in nearby Tontitown that we saw in 19 Kids and Counting in 2000. But they didn’t actually move in until 2006.

YouTube Video

No parent with any kind of love for their kids would have accepted the Springdale house as even a temporary solution—especially after what Josh had just done. Neither would any social worker with an iota of decency. Indeed, Jim Bob and Michelle’s real estate investments almost certainly allowed them the means to get a safer living situation, at least temporarily. Their failure to do so met the legal definition of child neglect in Arkansas.

Granted, Discovery has some explaining to do for seeing fit to promote the Duggars in the first place. But the fact that Jim Bob and Michelle allowed this situation to persist long after any reasonable person would have known this was unsafe is beyond inexcusable. And it would have been inexcusable even without Josh’s behavior.

Given the circumstances, you would have thought that getting a better living situation for his family would have been at the very top of Jim Bob’s priorities. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. At the time, Jim Bob was serving in the state house, and was greasing the wheels for a run for U.S. Senate. How was a Senate run, and a potential move to Washington, even on the radar screen when his family was in an unsafe, unsanitary, and unlawful living situation? But to pile obscenity on top of insult and injury, he not only opted to run for Senate, but plunked down $250,000 of his own money for the run—more than enough to get a decent-sized house in Arkansas at the time.

According to Inquisitr, Jim Bob described his kids as a “hobby,” and was actually proud of making them wear secondhand clothes. That certainly puts his fitness as a father into question, but in hindsight, something Jim Bob said when he and Michelle sat down with Megyn Kelly in 2015 is particularly disturbing considering Josh’s current situation. Jim Bob claimed that Josh’s actions weren’t a big deal—merely “inappropriate touching over the clothes.”

It says a lot that Jim Bob found it acceptable to make such a tone-deaf and inappropriate statement on national television. But if he was that brazen in front of the cameras, you have to wonder what he said behind closed doors. Did he downplay this with Josh in the same manner, even after learning it happened more than once?

But even if Jim Bob didn’t downplay Josh’s behavior, there’s a lot to suggest that his approach to parenting didn’t do Josh any favors. In their memoir, Growing Up Duggar, Jill, Jessa, Jana, and Jinger wrote that the concept of obedience in all things was drilled into them early on. Such obedience, they said, must be “instant, cheerful, thoughtful, and unconditional”—concepts carried over from one of their parents’ spiritual mentors, disgraced homeschooling guru Bill Gothard. They also added that their parents instituted a “chain of command” in which the younger children understand early on that “their older siblings are their elders and they should treat them as such.”

According to Dr. Bill, such heavy-handed parenting can have dire consequences later in life. A child could either have “difficulty expressing adult sexuality,” or worse, may “use sex as a tool to control or be controlled by others.” In Josh’s case, he never really learned healthy concepts of sexuality, and may not have really understood the seriousness of what he did in 2002 and 2003.

And now, because of that, his life as he knows it could potentially be over if he’s convicted. I crunched the numbers at the Sentencing Guidelines Calculator, and Josh probably faces anywhere from 11 to 14 years in prison if convicted on all charges. Preferably, he ought to get a total of 20 years, given the gravity of the charges. Additionally, he would have to register as a sex offender in Arkansas, most likely for life. He would also likely face a lengthy period of supervised release, possibly for life.

Frankly, though, it’s a travesty that Jim Bob and Michelle weren’t held accountable for their neglect of Josh and his siblings, as well as slow-walking their reporting of Josh molesting his kids. It is clear that their actions, and their failure to get help for Josh, directly led to him going down a path that will potentially put him in prison for a long time. To give you an idea how outrageous this is, imagine how it would look if those who took part in the insurrection of Jan. 6 went to prison, but those who incited them escaped justice.

In 2015, prosecutors said that the statute of limitations precluded a new investigation into Josh’s actions, as well as Jim Bob and Michelle’s inaction. One would think that the child neglect spelled out by Inquisitr would have made prosecutors take a second look. After all, if Jim Bob and Michelle slow-walked reporting Josh’s actions in order to throw child welfare services off the scent, it would be the definition of fraudulent conduct. If not, then it’s long past time to end statutes of limitations for cases of child abuse. The fact that Jim Bob and Michelle could potentially get a pass for their nonfeasance while Josh goes to prison is nothing short of a travesty.