For the first time since his 16-year-old son Josh Duggar confessed to molesting four underage girls as a teenager, Jim Bob Duggar has been asked to recall a series of conversations about the activity in question.
A first-person account by JD, a 16-year-old Duggar child who first told the story when he was around 12, indicated that neither he nor his sisters had made mention of the molestation to their parents.
Recalling that conversation with his brother in a recently released court document, JD said: “As I was talking to Jim Bob and Michelle, I asked him, ‘Do you remember a conversation with you that you had that you don’t want to remember?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’
“And that was after I told him about being kissed and molested.”
JD wrote that Josh, who has the initials J.D. in the document, was immediately “apologetic” about the situation but was willing to bear the consequences.
“Josh admitted to his behavior and apologized for his actions to my parents and stated he would do anything to make amends,” he said.
“I asked Josh if he had ever thought of reaching out to the state [a juvenile department of child protection].
“Josh stated, ‘No, I have no plans to do that,’ but was willing to at least express his regret and say he loved his family and wanted to be better.”
Back in 2015, the 21-year-old Duggar, who has left the show 19 Kids and Counting and entered two years of psychiatric treatment, confessed to the molestation charges and admitted to being a hypocrite for having tried to conceal the actions, first.
As well as his family, his marriage to Anna Duggar, his parents, and sisters Jessa and Jill Duggar Seewald, who have since revealed to reporters they were also molested by Josh, are also listed in the subpoena.
Jessa and Jill do not appear to have been asked for their evidence, either.
Duggar began a program to rehabilitate himself at the Christian-run Quiverfull Ministry Institute in Rockford, Illinois, in May of 2016, a month after his arrest for molesting his five victims, and left in February of this year.
He returned to Arkansas, where he was born, in late July to begin family counselling.
Josh’s request to the court that the material go in the public record on the case had to be presented in written form because the documents had been requested by the Judicial Inquiry Commission in relation to allegations of fraud against his fame-seeking side-show-boating father.
US District Judge Timothy L. Kelly – who is likely the only person to be aware of the contents of the investigation that his ruling means that the Arkansas Attorney General’s office has the right to approach JW – admits that the search of Jim Bob Duggar’s or Jill and Jessa’s emails was not warranted.
In response to written questions about the subpoena, an Arkansas Department of Law Services search warrant summarised by Good As You’s Meg White, an advocate for uncovering prosecutorial misconduct, exposed the attempt to obtain emails from the families of three of the women, Jill and Jessa, who were molested by Josh, their sister Anna, wife of Josh, and Jim Bob’s wife Michelle Duggar, the Mother of two daughters and Josh’s older brother John David Duggar.
In the first two emails, Michelle discloses she received a message which states that some of Josh’s actions “were not being reported to Child Protective Services” and said she would go to the police if she knew of any reports.
(In the event, police and the Northwest Arkansas Law Enforcement Agency (NWALEA) had no knowledge of any of the girls’ complaints about Josh’s sexual activity.)
In the final email, Michelle writes that she “witnessed my husband” and “believe you should ask them [law enforcement] to check [the girls]”.
The article also reveals that information from her lawyer, who was led to believe that her marriage to Jim Bob was on the rocks following the molestation confession, was requested as a part of the subpoena in relation to the search of JW.
However, Jim Bob’s lawyer states “JW seeks irrelevant and privileged information from JW that could just as easily have been revealed in a conversation at an event, disclosure of which would not make the contents of the conversation public”.