Sadly, people have been following the criminal exploits of the Duggar family for decades. I had to go through our Duggar Family archives to really remind myself of when the wheels completely came off this despicable family of Evangelical-cult hypocrites and predators. Back in 2015, we learned that Josh Duggar, the eldest son of Jim-Bob and Michelle Duggar, had molested his sisters when he was a teenager, and he’d also been cheating on his wife for years. Josh wasn’t prosecuted for his crimes against women and girls in the 2010s. Then, in 2021, the authorities raided Josh’s home and business and found a stash of child sexual abuse material. In 2022, Josh was convicted and sentenced to nearly 13 years in federal prison. He’s tried to appeal, but it’s gone nowhere, so he’s still in prison.
Look at the timeline of the raid on Josh’s home and business again – 2021. As it turns out, the year beforehand, one of Josh’s younger brothers molested a child in Florida. Joseph Duggar, who is currently 31 years old, was charged this week for crimes he committed against a child in 2020.
Former 19 Kids and Counting star Joseph Duggar is facing charges after allegedly molesting a 9-year-old girl while vacationing in 2020.
Joseph, 31, was charged with lewd and lascivious molestation of a victim less than 12 years old and lewd and lascivious behavior conducted by a person 18 years or older, the Bay County Sheriff’s Office announced on Wednesday, March 18.
The former TLC star is now awaiting extradition to Bay County to face the charges. He was booked into the Washington County, Arkansas, jail on March 18 at 3:59 p.m. local time, PEOPLE can confirm.
He was charged in connection with a child sexual abuse case involving a then-9-year-old girl who was on vacation with her family in Panama City Beach, Fla., in 2020.
The alleged sexual abuse occurred when Joseph allegedly asked the victim to sit on his lap. “As the vacation continued, he also asked her to sit next to him on a couch and covered them with a blanket. During this time, Duggar manipulated the victim’s underwear and grazed her genitals. Duggar would also continue to rub his hands on her thighs,” Bay County Sheriff’s Office said.
“The victim stated Duggar eventually apologized for his actions and the incidents stopped after the apology,” Bay County Sheriff’s Office said.
The arrest was a result of the victim, now 14, participating in a forensic interview regarding a report of past sexual abuse. The victim’s father confronted Duggar about the incidents and Joseph “allegedly admitted his actions to the father and Tontitown detectives.”
PEOPLE reached out to the Bay County Sheriff’s Office and a representative for the Duggar family. PEOPLE confirms that Duggar is in police custody, but an official extradition timeline has not been released.
I don’t exactly understand what “participating in a forensic interview regarding a report of past sexual abuse” means – does it mean that the victim (or the victim’s parents) reported Joseph’s behavior in real time, in 2020, and it’s taken this long for a forensic interview to be conducted? I guess my question is, why has there been a five-year-plus delay on bringing charges against Joseph? And when exactly did Joseph apologize to his victim’s father? Update: Per NBC News, nothing was reported to the authorities in 2020, when it happened: “Tontitown police said in statement that they received a report of a sexual abuse earlier Wednesday and reported it to the Bay County Sheriff’s Department, as the alleged incident had occurred there. The sheriff’s office said the girl’s father confronted Duggar about the alleged abuse on Tuesday. ‘Duggar admitted his actions to the victim’s father and to Tontitown Detectives,’ the office said.”
People Magazine also noted something odd about Joseph’s social media. Like all Duggars, once they get married, the Duggar and their spouse start their own stand-alone Instagram account. They use those accounts to promote their right-wing cult trad-life and all of their babies. Joseph and his wife Kendra maintained and posted to their Instagram account up until November 2021, about one year after Joseph abused a child. They stopped posting then, but the account is still active and people can still comment on their posts. Why did they stop posting in 2021?
And of course there are larger questions about and for the Duggar family. This is now the second child of Jim-Bob and Michelle to harm children.
Photos courtesy of Joseph Duggar’s Instagram.
May the POS rot in jail
In Jesus’ name, amen.
I worked at a Child Advocacy Center for many years and a forensic interview is a structured, recorded conversation between a specially trained professional and a child (usually ages 3–17) to gather accurate information regarding allegations of abuse or witness to violence. It provides a safe, neutral environment to minimize trauma, ensuring the child only tells their story once while assisting in legal investigations. These cannot be ordered or requested by the child advocacy center, parents, or the victim – it has to come from child protection services or law enforcement (sometimes local, sometimes FBI). Child victims of sexual violence used to have to tell their story up to 13 times in the course of an investigation – retraumatizing them over and over. The idea of a forensic interview is that it is “court-ready” should the case proceed, and the child can proceed immediately into trauma-informed counseling and support regardless of whether the case moves forward or not (that’s up to the prosecutor’s office). These services are free to the victim and their non-offending caregivers usually (funded by Federal and State monies collected in the course of prosecuting offenders and diverted back to victims – VAWA and VOCA funds). Also…when there’s clusters of abuse like this, it tells you something about the entire family structure. And a society where women’s bodies are fixated upon as ultimately the property and purview of a man…well, it produces these kinds of results.
That’s helpful! Thank you.
So, a second Duggar son being caught being a PDF and SA.
Not a great look for this family and their religion. Not at all.
The grandfather was a pedophile, according to their cousin. That family has a lot more skeletons lurking and I’m sure Jim Bob Dugger is guilty of perversion, too.
My guess on the timeline of the crime vs the charge: the father tried to blackmail money out of Joseph and failed or the victim ended up telling a mandated reporter.
No, the father only confronted Joseph within the last few days, because the victim only came forward recently. There are other articles out there with more info on the timeline than People has. It looks like the father confronted him and then went to the police.
@lauren thank you!
@steph, these cases often take YEARS to move from engagement with law enforcement to a warrant for arrest. As sexual crime rarely has any witnesses, and it’s the word of two people against each other made all the more difficult if it’s a child (“children make stuff up – they have a great imagination, of course that’s not true”), it’s a long process if it goes this far. Because of this, the average age of child sexual abuse disclosure is 52. Because people tend not to believe victims, and sometimes the parents just want to move on and hope their kids “get over it” because trials are brutal to all victims – even children (though Child Advocacy Centers work hard to minimize the impact). The idea that there’s always an attempt to extort money – that’s a very dangerous narrative. If I had a dollar for every person who said, “well, I’m sure they were just trying to get money”…this is a huge reason that people don’t believe victims, including children. 1 in 4 girls, 1 in 6 boys before the age of 18. Trust me – when sexual abuse happens, money is no one’s first thought. And if criminal charges don’t go forward, sometimes the only way to get an abuser’s name on record and the only kind of justice available is a civil court case because the burden of proof is lower. Less than 4% of sexual crimes end in conviction and the average abuser has harmed 76 victims in their lifetime. It’s an overwhelming problem. *Also, prosecutor’s offices don’t announce arrests in CSA cases unless they feel like they have the case pretty well in hand – the forensic interview could have been conducted years ago, and they are only now pursuing charges. We don’t know all that has happened in between. The timeline (including social media silence) suggests to me that this has been bubbling behind the scenes for a while.
@nutellatoast, my thoughts of extortion are specific to this case, not a generalization of child sexual abuse. The victim’s family are more than likely a part of the same cult as the Duggars. That same cult who covered up for Josh when his victims came fwd (they came fwd really soon btw). By the time the crime happened it was public knowledge about Josh and it was public knowledge that the Duggar sisters went no contact with the rest of the family. So yes, I automatically am thinking the worst about someone who vacations with a Duggar and leaves their young child unattended with one.
Correction: Joseph wasn’t caught in 2020. The victim came forward within the past few days and her father confronted Joseph. The police were then contacted.
I follow this situation, so I can say that this is one of the cases when it was reported very fast from the moment of finding out. The victim came forward just a few days ago and her father acted fast. Joseph apologised to the victim, back in 2020, not to her father. He confessed to her father right away when confronted and the dad went to the police.