Does anyone care about the younger Duggar children? Because I really don’t. Plus, I have the added drama of not really being able to tell the Duggar boys apart. I think I’ve gotten the photo IDs in this post correct – these should be photos of Joseph Duggar (age 20) and John-David Duggar (age 25). Neither is married, from what I kind tell, although there are some rumors about “courting.” Both Joseph and John-David are younger than Josh Duggar, obviously, and they’re finally speaking out about Josh’s illegal activities and about everything that’s come out this year. Apparently, these two Duggars also gave interviews for Jessa and Jill’s spinoff show, Counting On. Seems like everybody gave an interview to this show, huh?
A controversial year has changed the Duggars’ family dynamic. In a moving exclusive clip from the new special Jill & Jessa: Counting On, John-David and Joseph Duggar break their silence about older brother Josh and the havoc his August cheating scandal wreaked on their family.
“After everything started to settle down from the first release of stuff in the news about Josh, we got word of a second thing that we had no clue about,” John-David, 25, says during a tense interview, seeming to address Josh’s revelation of inappropriate conduct involving five underage girls being made public this past May. Adds John-David, “That was a little more of a shock probably than the first stuff coming out.”
When it came to Josh’s extramarital activities, “I don’t think there’s any way any of us would have known that my brother was living such a secret life,” says Joseph, 20, who is close to tears during his interview. “It broke my heart. Whenever somebody you respect the most is willing to get up and proclaim what we believe as Christians, about being true to your wife, you’d never think that that’s the person who’s involved in it.”
Now, the brothers say they’ve all but lost a hero: “I always wanted to be like him. But one of the toughest things I had to tell my older brother was, I don’t want to be like you anymore,” says John-David.
As the second eldest of the Duggar brothers, he says it’s now up to him to set the example. “It’s a big load. It’s a big weight upon me now. I’ve got a whole bunch of younger siblings looking up to me, and I’ve got to be an example to them. Because whatever I am, that’s what they want to be. I know that’s how it was for me and Josh.”
I actually do feel sorry for many of the younger Duggars. Not so much Jessa, but I have a small bit of compassion for Joseph and John-David. They probably did grow up thinking that they wanted to be like Josh. Only to have that dream smashed in spectacular fashion. But what bugs me about these quotes is the same thing that bugged me during the unfolding Duggar scandals: people really believe that Josh’s extramarital affairs were SO MUCH worse than he’s escalating child abuse/molestation of his siblings. That bothers me. Obviously, Josh’s affairs were hypocritical, but I really do think that a lot of Duggar fans felt like they could “forgive” Josh for molesting children as a teenager, but they couldn’t forgive him for cheating on his wife with adult women. And that’s… wrong.
Photos courtesy of the Duggars’ social media.
Man, these things are like Tribbles. How many of them are there and how much longer do we have to be subjected to their buffoonery?
19 and counting Josh’s four and Jill’s one and Jessa’s one and the three brainless in-laws. And how ever many rodents are living in Squirrel’s hair. And counting
I lol’d hard and loud at “rodents living in Squirrel’s hair.” And now everyone knows I read Celebitchy at work. Oops …
I read on another site that Gopher and Squirrel are featured in a new documentary about adopting a baby in FIVE DAYS. Apparently Jesus will let you adopt a baby really fast if you pray hard enough and ask the Duggars for their help EVEN THOUGH it was NOT a Duggar offspring that ended up being adopted! Weird, I know, but truth is stranger than fiction sometimes! And while they claim that the adoptive parents passed all the background checks/home studies/psych evaluations/etc., I find it deeply disturbing that anyone thought it was good idea to involve Dim Bulb and Big Hair Brood Mare in an adoption. They cannot properly take care of the children they have already whelped into this world. They believe in blanket training infants, which any normal, reasonable person recognizes as physical abuse. They covered up their son’s molestation of underage girls FOR YEARS. None of their adult children has earned any kind of useful degree from an accredited college or university, and I have not heard of any of the non-Josh children engaging in employment that does not involve the family business or a TV camera in their faces. In short, NO ONE should take any kind of parenting or adoption advice from Jim Boob and Squirrel EVER, yet some twits not only did that but MADE A MOVIE about it too.
I need a drink. That’s enough internet for today.
Oh my goodness- I just googled “blanket training” & want to throw up. Those poor kids. The Duggars (according to police) have a rod that they use on their kids…..I’m with you Bearcat- I’m out for the day.
If you need something to lighten your mood & enjoy the internet later just google “Lego Snowden Christmas”. It’ll (hopefully) cleanse your brain of Duggars….
F them.
Please don’t insult Tribbles.
They’re troubling.
Bahahaha. Tribbles. Perfect description is perfect. Also, this buffoonery has been too long sanctioned. Just ask Tommy Lee Jones. 🙂
This comment made me think of the gremlins, just throw water at them and see what happens.
It’s like the Kardashians, they keep on reproducing and trying to stay in the limelight.
Consenting adults engaging in consenting sexual acts….you are going to hell.
Molesting children…..ahhh, what can you do.
Fuc**** idiots. The lot of them.
Exactly! WTF?! He actually said that was “more of a shock”. It just goes to show how they view sexuality, female consent, etc. They are really messed up & the “values” they like to hand out is pretty sick. So they stood by Josh after he molested 5 girls but not after he cheats on his wife & watched porn?! If the disgust was about Josh’s assault on the woman he cheated with I’d think about it more but I know it’s not about that at all. They could give a rip about THAT part of the story….. Ugh- so much ugh.
It was more of a shock because they’d already known (and covered up) the molestation for years. He confessed and prayed his sins away. This one, he hid from his family and didn’t confess till he’d been caught.
I’m not even surprised. I grew up in a Fundi home, I know those people better than they know themselves. They pin the molestation on Satan ‘tempting’ Josh with his sisters and other teenage girls. But, the logic goes, he should have learned to resist Satan by the time he started nailing consenting adult women
I think you guys have taken his words out of context. What I interpreted him to have said was that he knew of what happened with his sisters, it was topic of family discussion probably for many years, hush hush of course but still something the family knew about, including the brothers. Plus it was all aired again recently with those ridiculous interviews and all the bullsh*t from Jessa and Jill. The stuff he did the past few years as a “reformed Christian husband and father” with the strippers and prostitutes was not something John David et al thought him capable of, after all he had learned the error of his ways from Jesus as a teen and was saved again, yadda yadda…. The younger boys needed to see this though, I think the Duggar downfall has really made the hypocrisy sink in big time, maybe a few of them still have a fighting chance.
I think your are probably correct about the “shocked” piece since he knew about the abuse. But……I think that molesting your sisters should always & forever be as shocking as sleeping with someone other then your wife. It just shows how sick they are. I also agree with your “reformed” idea & maybe this will get people (and Duggars) to think twice about “reforming” (but not really since he got no therapy, consequences, etc….). I so hope a few of them break free. Maybe in a decade we will be hearing new stories from them.
They weren’t surprised about the assaults but were surprised to learn about the adultery. I have long suspected that Josh assaulted his brothers too
i suspect that too
and noting that the girls he molested got nothing from their parents, i think it would be even worse on the victim if one of the boys spoke out
Wouldn’t be surprised – but they’d definitely hide that one deeper since ya know, Sodom, Gomorrah, that whole shiz.
I think some of the lack of surprise about the first part too, is just that it’s something that’s sadly been what they grew up dealing with. The molestation became part of their life.
What isn’t part of their life is the idea that they’d dare stray from their spouses. Jim Bob is clearly still happy enough to impregnate their mother every ten minutes, and like the guy said – Josh would talk about how important it is to be true to your wife, and all that. It was a complete lie – one they hadn’t been briefed on. So to them, the molestation wasn’t a surprise, but the fact that he had MORE going on, and was actively talking against it – they were caught off guard.
Hopefully some of the younger sons will at least treat their wives like humans, and genuinely love and respect them. I don’t see them breaking free, but I hope they can at least treat their wives and daughters more like equals than the idiots they’ve grown up admiring have.
^^^This. I suspect ol’ Josh is an equal opportunity predator.
Ahhh- that’s interesting and a part I didn’t think about. Maybe that’s why his brother’s gave him a “pass” on the molestation and were not “shocked”? They could be victims and reacting from that stance. Okay- that’s really, really sad if true….I could see the brothers taking on part of the blame or downplaying the abuse (like the girls did). I could also see the family trying to hide that part more then the molestation of the girls since it was male to male. They need to go dig a hole under a rock & live there forever.
I never thought of that, but it makes sense.
I suspect that, and I also suspect not all is “kosher” with Dim Bulb, either.
Adultery was more shocking than incest?! I can’t even.
well it wasnt shocking to him because he lived it
even if none of the boys were victims (which im not really buying), he was there when his sisters were locked in their bedrooms at night.
yup.
At first I read the title as “John-David Duggar doesn’t want to be a Duggar anymore” – must have been wishful thinking.
So really other than not having the parents on, how is this really going to be any different than before? Especially if there are more episodes or a spin off of this spin off. Its just the same crap, different name. I call it now, they will spend a couple shows speaking about Josh, how horrible the media is then right back to where we were before the scandal. Watch.
WTH kind of a pointy room are they posing in?
Looks like the corner of a sanctuary to me. Lots of churches have odd ceiling lines – especially cheaper ones – and they look really distorted in pictures.
I read it as in they already knew about the molestation so it wasnt shocking when it came out. But their brother was so loud about being true to his wife that it took them by surprise.
I don’t know, these kids have been brainwashed since they were born, it wouldnt surprise me if their parents told them what Josh did to their sisters was their sisters fault so they just ignored that.
They also very likely didn’t really know what he did to their sisters or the extent of it. The explanations were probably rather vague. They knew new rules were in place in reaction to it, but probably not the real details. But they know the details of his activities as an adult, and they are adults now also and not children so they understand it at a whole different level.
John-David doesn’t really say they knew about the molestations. He just says that the second wave of revelations were a bit more of a shock than the first. That suggests he didn’t know the details of the molestations before, but everyone involved was saying it was over and done with, Josh had been remorseful and had changed and had been forgiven by the victims. The second revelations were quite different – Josh was an adult and married. I don’t think any of the younger ones’ comments can be interpreted as thinking molesting their sisters was no big deal. I think they found out the details when we did, and that was clearly also a shock to them.
He said he was surprised about the adultery not the molestation. I don’t think he classified one is worse than the other. It may not have been so shocking because they probably already knew about that. These boys are older than the girls Josh molested, they had to have known something was going on.
John-David always seemed different than the rest of them. He is soft spoken and well trained in many different avenues. He seems sweet and gentle like his twin Jana. It’s hard to lose a life long role model, especially your big brother. I hope he manages to escape and have whatever kind of a normal life he can find. Good luck JD. (I wonder if josh will ever have any kind of a life anymore with the Scarlett letter on his chest).
What makes you think he would want to escape? Josh was going around making conservative anti gay anti this anti that speeches for a living prior to the explosion of his private life and these 2 fat head guys wanted to be him. Now he has to set an example for all the million other duggars and be better at being Josh than Josh was.
I was going to say the same. Like John David ever wanted to be like Josh? John David always appeared to be separate from the family, he’s quiet and unmarried like his twin Jana, he Aldo his the only Duggar to live on his own, and supposedly has his own business.
Thanks pf that’s what I meant. For whatever reason, they let him live more beyond the cameras. I also heard he had his own place and didn’t live with the tribe. Josh was so arrogant, almost embarrassingly so, while JD was learning to fly planes, run for office and manage businesses. I don’t care about his political agenda, that’s his thing, I don’t have to agree. It’s just nice to see he has his own mind and won’t let JB and Michelle dictate his life.
I despise the way People keeps shilling for the family.
I despise the way I keep clicking on their articles.
I’ve always felt sort of bad for the twins. Jana and John David seem like the workhorses of the family. Jana is basically the primary childcare and John David always seems to be working or doing something. How much have they been allowed to just be children on their own? Probably never. Their sisters have moved on and are building their families and now the twins are expected to pick up the slack.
I get what he’s saying here. He’s struggling with the idea that his brother failed. But will any of them make the connection that living such a restricted life isn’t healthy, sexually or any other way? Josh is responsible for his actions, but it’s also true that Josh’s family did not give him any of the tools he would have actually needed to lead a sexually healthy life. Josh is responsible for his own actions, but he wasn’t given any decent chance for success, either. I hope this has given his siblings a chance to think about this stuff and consider whether their parents ever had their best interests at heart.
Based on everything i’ve read about how the Duggars parent eg blanket training and being sunny at all times, I seriously doubt that these boys (and girls) would question their parents’ way of parenting them. At least in the open. Any negative thoughts seem to be treated as Satan attacking or their own failure for living a godly life. They would never make the missing connection that leads to how badly they were parented.
When I think about how they were ALL parented including Josh, I have a smidge of sympathy or is it pity? At some point we are all responsible for ourselves, but some people will never break out of the structure/tools given by their parents so that they can think for themselves.
That said, one of the myriad websites speaking about the Duggars when these scandals broke had a commentor who identified as a former crew member who said Josh was forever being punished for his sexual curiosity whilst never being told how to have a healthy view of sex. It was all ‘idle hands lead to evil deeds’ type of severe punishments.
Further, apparently Josh was caught watching pron on the computer of some Washington bound person which Jim Bob apparently blamed on the person rather than Josh, which makes me question their stance that Josh’s addiction to pron and where that led, was a surprise.
That’s my view. From the way the molestation has been described (and granted, we can only go off of what is told in the press), it sounds like Josh was at an age where sexual curiosity is common and his offenses seemed like they were an acting out on those urges. Which sort of make sense. These kids are raised to believe that any sexual urges outside of a marriage are evil and sinful but that, upon your marriage, you’re supposed to be able to flip a switch and become a Grade A Babymaker. And some people can do that. But a lot can’t. People ran an article a little while ago that said that Jim Bob refused to allow any toys, even baby toys, that made music because they might encourage the kids to move their bodies in a way that might “incite lust.” They do the “Nike” thing where the boys are expected to avert their eyes from anything “lustful.” It’s crazy. How could a young man develop a healthy sexuality in such an environment? He can’t. He’s going to come out screwy. On that level, I do not think Josh is an evil monster. I think he’s a profoundly messed up kid whose parents share the blame. But he’s just being tossed aside. I doubt that family is dealing with any soul-searching or reflection on their own methods. It’s just more of the same.
I have a lot of sympathy for Jessa. She is a victim of childhood abuse.
Yep- as we all should! People are multifaceted so she can be a victim/survivor (which we should have empathy for & not discount) but could also be a crappy person. I’m not saying she is and I’ve never watched the show but I do not like the Duggars- any of them. Though I do feel for each of the kids who were a victim of abuse…..it’s horrible 🙁
I have sympathy for her as well. Do I agree with her political opinions or cheer on her reality career? Definitely not. But I don’t have a problem feeling that way while also finding it unfortunate that she was abused as a child (both by Josh and emotionally by her parents).
What happened with Jessa, why people dislike her?
Having never ever seen the show and hardly even knowing who these people were before this scandal broke out, I too am horrified that their response to Josh’s “porn addiction” and “extra-marital affairs” was so much worse than the stories that he had SEXUALLY MOLESTED his own sisters!! WTF! If we are going to rank disgusting behaviors, sexual abuse of children has got to be at the top of that list. I cannot believe TLC gave them a platform again. Vile.
This whole thing now is so obvious the “Let’s throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” mentality by TLC. How can we still make money off the Duggar name? Don’t want Josh? Ok, here’s the pretty, vacuous ones. How about Anna? Still like her? Here she is. Want some manDuggars? No Jim-Bob? How about John-David? Work for you? Let them tell you how ‘strong’ they are as family. As Christians.
That’s enough. We don’t care. Find someone else to shill.
How much do you want to bet they drag out the littlest kids next?
I watched the show last night, well kind of, i was drinking and knitting.
It was awful and every other word was “like.”
Watch something instead 😉 Anything……
Well, when he got caught molesting children, he probably tried to play it off as “I’m just a kiiidd, I was experimenting! I didn’t know any better! Please forgive me, I’ll never ever ever do it again!” And everyone in his life fell for it. That’s the way they’ve tried to spin it to the public, too, that it was a mistake he made when he was barely more than a child himself. A lot of people stood by him under the belief that he had repented and reformed (from Christians who accept this possibility as part of their belief system, to politicians who thought the Duggars could get them votes). But the unspoken agreement there was that he would not fall back into a situation like that or humiliate his family in public again. Then it comes to light that he has been lying to all these people who publicly *stuck their necks out for him*, who risked their reputations to defend him. And people are wondering “how much of the story he told us before is true after all? What if we were wrong to let him off the hook the first time, if he’s been lying to us the whole time about this other thing?”
Appearances are important. Getting caught cheating ruined all that expensive effort to brush the other scandal under the rug.
….although fundamentalists do see all sins as equal. They don’t believe in “venial” sins. Especially not when it comes to sex.
I have a question and maybe this is controversial so apologies upfront as I am not trying to offend or be ignorant. Has anyone looked into if the parents or someone else molested this Josh guy? Kids that molest generally learn it from somewhere. He can’t be totally at fault if he was molested himself and was just doing what he was taught. Just thought i’d mention it.
No one’s reported anything like that and anything that happened would be long past the statute of limitations. He may or may not have been sexually abused as a child, but there’s no way of knowing and no cause for the police to investigate.
I sort of take issue with the rest of your post. There is a relationship between having been abused and abusing others, but the majority of male abusers (65% according to this study http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/179/6/482) were not abused themselves, and many people who were abused are not abusive toward others. Josh has free will, like everyone else, and I think he still bears responsibility for his actions.
That’s not controversial at all.
I wish people would stop talking about this shnizz, I was unfortunately put in a similar situation as some of the Duggar girls, but we without the crazy fundamental cult part. It’s an unfortunately common occurrence among all kinds of families that goes unheard of to so many people because of its taboo nature. My abuser was also raped and hurt others while a minor…these articles are far too triggering, but almost a relief to see I am not alone in the slightest.
I wouldn’t be surprised if any boys were also abused in such a manner. Shame on the parents for hiding such atrocities. But as someone who was NOT raised to feel so ashamed about sexuality, sercrets, etc. I have not been shut down by family, friends, or my fiancee. My parents never knew of the situation though, so I do not blame them solely for what happened. I blame my brother’s abuser and my brother…I would not be surprised if Josh was also abused or raped. This behavior doesn’t appear out of nowhere.
Again, the cheating, “porn addiction”, and other “secrets” are more shocking to so many probably because they are so religious/borderline cultish…and their priorities are different…to say the least. Anyway, enough of these weirdos…please
It’s his brother he respects the most, not his father? PR talk, PR talk.
I think that although the younger boys may have unofficially known about the molestations, they thought he had stopped the behavior and would never do it again, and it was just a teenage sin for which he had been forgiven. The sisters who were molested were saying that themselves, so it’s unrealistic to assume that the boys would think any different, they might even have been rather fuzzy about what exactly it involved. I don’t know why the concept of forgiveness seems so foreign to some here. It isn’t unusual for children and adolescents to do things they would never do again as adults – they do wrong but are corrected and forgiven. We recognize that they are not fully formed adults, their brains are still developing. Josh’s teen activities are known now to be ones that are a sign of deep issues that need to be intensively addressed if the behavior is truly to be stopped and the person is to have a chance of real recovery (which seems most possible if dealt with before adulthood), but the Duggars didn’t know that. These are the same people who think “blanket training” makes sense, after all. Their understanding of child development is rather skewed and limited.
But the blatant and repeated unfaithfulness to his wife as a full grown man was another thing entirely, and went against what Josh himself had preached. Plus the boys are now full grown men themselves and such faithfulness is part of their own religious framework as well. So I can see why the younger ones would find Josh’s recent activities much more disturbing. It shattered their image of him in a way that the fuzzy whispers of teenage sinfulness (supposedly corrected and forgiven) could not.
Re-reading what the Duggar guys said, I think they really didn’t know about the molestations in any detail until the scandal broke in public. So they were shocked by that, then shocked again by his activities as an adult (which showed he had not reformed from his teenage sins). No indication that they weren’t disturbed by the molestations.
Totally off topic: man, how much would it suck to realize your combination of genes with the hubby is just not putting together attractive people, not Giselle levels but not even average attractiveness. I mean, no big deal if you I only have one kid, two kids- you don’t know you still might secretly have the potential to create the most beautiful human ever. But those weirdo grifters Michelle and Jim Bob popped out 20 kids… And most of them are just… Not cute. Not even average. Other than Jessa they are just… Unfortunate. And age isn’t going to improve anything for them.
I mean it’s totally shallow I know but man, that kinda sucks to have the actual proof. Anyhoodles, I’ll see myself out!