Another Duggar has been arrested for sexually abusing a child

Joseph Duggar was arrested for what he did to a nine-year-old girl in 2020, when he was 26

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You just knew there was no way Joshua Duggar was the only rotten apple in the bunch…

Yesterday, 31-year-old Joseph Garrett Duggar was arrested for what the Bay County Sheriff’s Office (in Florida) described as “Lewd and Lascivious Behavior, involving unlawful sexual activity with a minor.”

Joseph Duggar in 2018 (screenshot via YouTube)

The story goes like this: In 2020, when Joseph was 26, he was on vacation in Panama City Beach. Another family was also there with a 9-year-old girl. (As of this writing, it’s not clear how the two families are connected.) The girl, who’s now 14, recently told law enforcement officials that Joseph touched her inappropriately:

The victim reported Duggar repeatedly asked her 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.

The victim stated Duggar eventually apologized for his actions and the incidents stopped after the apology.

The girl’s father confronted Joseph about all this on Tuesday and he admitted his actions to both the father and the local police. He was later arrested.

Joseph Duggar’s mugshot

All of this might not be a national story, except the Duggars put themselves in the media spotlight years ago when they starred in the hit TLC show 19 Kids and Counting. That show came to an abrupt end after the world learned about the criminal conviction of the family’s predatory eldest son Joshua Duggar, who molested five underage girls, including his own sisters. (That’s just one of his many scandals, by the way.) Other members of the family remained on TV for several more years in the spinoff Counting On.

When you look at the timeline of all this, something else also emerges: Joshua’s workplace was raided by the feds in 2019, well before his 2021 arrest for illicit material found on his computer. That means the family must have been aware of the allegations long before Joseph Duggar went on that family vacation. They can’t pretend this is all bad behavior from the past when it was literally occurring in real time. As one son was being investigated for crimes involving children, another son was (allegedly) committing a similar crime.

Oh, and don’t forget that the eldest daughter, Jana Duggar, was charged with child endangerment in 2021.

And Jim Bob Duggar had the audacity to run for the Arkansas State Senate that same year on a “pro-family” campaign, while all this chaos was happening! (He lost in the Republican primary.)

Anyway, if you’re doing the math, that’s 20% of Duggar boys who have been charged with crimes involving children. If you include the free space, some of you may be very close to winning Duggar Family Child Endangerment Bingo. The next spinoff will be Two Convictions and Counting.

None of these family members, by the way, are drag queens.

It’s honestly hard to find older members of the family who come out looking okay after all this. Hell, the matriarch of the family, Michelle Duggar, even recorded a robocall in 2014 trashing the Fayetteville City Council for considering a non-discrimination ordinance. She told voters it would lead to transgender people harassing their children in restrooms.

Turns out her own sons were far more of a danger to children than trans people ever were.

The Duggars spent several years implying that their family was better than everyone else’s family because of their Christian core built on a foundation of unused condoms. Their faith-based quiverfull household was broadcast as safer, purer, and more trustworthy than the secular world around them.

Yet their name has become synonymous with the worst kinds of religious hypocrisy. Much like Catholic priests, the very people who cast themselves as society’s moral guardians have repeatedly been accused or convicted of harming the children they claimed to protect.

One of these stories would have been devastating enough. But you can’t even chalk this up to one kid in a large family losing his way. This is just how the family operates.

It’s also a reminder of how conservative Christian activists have always portrayed marginalized groups as existential threats to kids. That narrative has driven legislation, fueled harassment, and diverted attention away from the reality that abuse so often occurs at the hands of people who pretend to have any kind of moral authority. How many horror stories have we now heard about the Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP), the harmful Christian movement boosted by the Duggars and founded by Bill Gothard, who, in 2014, resigned from the group after 34 women claimed he had sexually harassed them?

Who knows how many more revelations have yet to come out about the Duggar family?

When their show was on TV, the Duggars hoped to be seen as the quintessential example of a conservative Christian family. I would argue they’ve accomplished that goal. Just not for any of the reasons they anticipated.

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