If the latest revelations don’t change the locks on TLC’s Duggar door, nothing will. PoliticusUSA colleague, Jason Easley, has thoroughly covered the absurd and obsequious Fox interview that shifts the blame away from an incestuous sicko and his equally sick parents, Jim Bob and Michelle, to those awful police and media people who brought the filthy truth of two giant hypocrites to light. Congratulations to In Touch Weekly for an FOIA job well done.
Utilizing the Freedom of Information Act for its transparency intent, In Touch obtained the second of two police reports on Josh Duggars reprehensible incestuous acts, allegedly committed when he was 14 and 15 years of age. Four (out of five at the time) of his sisters were targets as well as one young babysitter who was sleeping over.
The PR flaks are working overtime to deflect attention from the family pervert to those thoughtful people who are making a big deal out of incest and sexual molestation. In the Fox Network “Kelly File” interview of the Duggars, hostess Megyn Kelly exclaimed, “It must have been terrible. I’m sure you’re going through hell right now.” She was referring to the condemnation of the Duggar low key reaction to the molestation of their daughters by a son.
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No, Kelly, the Duggars aren’t going through hell, but any viewer with a sympathetic and objective bone in his or her body is going through the hell of knowing that virtually all the evangelical big wigs and the high-profile right-wing politicians, pundits and the media are incredibly silent on the subject. And some of those same “Christians” labored mightily to cover up all of the sordid Josh Duggar misdeeds. I have never been more embarrassed for the electronic news media, my professional home for decades.
Here’s the nuts and bolts of this mess. It was admitted in the second police report that one of his targets was his five-year-old sister, sitting in his lap, while he read a book and touched her “breasts and vaginal area.” All of this happened over a period of time, supposedly always while the daughters were sleeping (reading a book to a sleeping five-year-old?). However, if sleeping was usually the case and since Duggar claims that Josh came running to him fessing up each time he molested, why wasn’t there some kind of warning system when perv got close to the girls bedrooms? There were one or two common sleeping rooms for the daughters. Remember, it was Duggar, who, when he once ran for the U.S. Senate, said incest ought to be a capital crime and a death penalty offense.
Duggar also said that Josh only touched his victims “over the clothes”, then he said “There were a couple of instances when he touched them under their clothes.” In the report uncovered by In Touch, it became clear (if any of the Duggar’s statements are true) that church elders played a major role in covering up the sickest of sick behavior. The Duggars only came in when authorities were alerted by a call to the Arkansas State Police Child Abuse Hotline in December of 2006.
In my humble opinion, the explanation of how the caller found out about the perversion is pure malarkey. They told the detective/investigator that a family friend, who was aware of what happened, wrote what he knew in a letter. The friend then placed the letter in a book and promptly forgot about it. Somebody later borrowed the book, found the letter and called the hotline.
Quite a story. There’s a career as a novelist awaiting the individual who cooked that one up. My suspicion is that one of the kids might have actually been enough of a true Christian to make the call.
After multiple molestations by Josh, Duggar then claims to have met with church elders for counsel. In addition to law enforcement, why wouldn’t Child Protective Services be called in from the get-go, or a psychologist who specializes in the field? This is a very complex issue. Church elders know nothing compared to professionals. But I guess they’re experts at covering up such volatile occurrences.
The holy mob talked about sending Josh to a local Piney Ridge hospital for treatment, but Duggar said he had talked to an ex-prison guard who told him that Josh might be exposed to other offenders and the stay would serve as a “Finishing School” for fledgling molesters. It was decided he should go to a Christian Ministry in Little Rock.
Could the fact that Piney Ridge was 12 miles from the Duggar residence of Tontitown at the time, while Little Rock was 200 miles distant, have played a role in the decision? He allegedly stayed for four months and “voila” a complete cure. Mom and pop Duggar assured the detective that Josh “no longer had any problem” and all had been resolved, the girls had forgiven him and the few in the church that knew about his shenanigans had all been supportive.
The only police contact at the time of these perversions was apparently a stern lecture from an Arkansas State Police Corporal named Hutchins. Duggars came to know Hutchins when he inspected a car dealership Duggars owned at the time.
A Harvard mental health letter from the medical school’s publication site points out that those afflicted with these life-long conditions have no available effective treatment. The best one can hope for is that the pedophile doesn’t act on his or her compulsions to molest a child. That can only be assured by preventing access to children (Josh has two of his own) or providing close supervision.
The parents and the church are enablers in this case through their naive belief that all is well. It’s not, and if I were in the vicinity of the Duggar clan and the parent of a small child, I wouldn’t buddy up with Josh or, frankly, his parents. Sadly, I’m now not even sure about certain of the sisters since victims can go on to become abusers. Two of them just released high-profile public statements of forgiveness.
TLC needs to get out from under this nightmare, ASAP. No equivocating. The Duggar family should be gone, never to return. CBN can have them.
Raised rural & small town, then lived in N.Y., Chicago & LA. Widely traveled. Returned from world wandering to pursue media life of anchorman/reporter and major, medium and small market talk radio. Highly active in politics. Once worked as orderly & security in Mens Lock Ward for the Criminally Insane at a state institution. Much more rational population than current Teapublicans. Great concern for country run by and for the extreme wealthy. The inhumane current running through this country has no precedent in modern history.
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