“It’s crazy to think this is happening again,” cousin Amy Duggar King tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story
NEED TO KNOW
- Joseph Duggar was recently arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing a 9-year-old girl — while he and his siblings were appearing on TLC
- It’s only the latest in a growing list of scandals for the reality megafamily who drew millions on TV with an unusual mix of wholesome attitudes and strict religious beliefs
- As parents Jim Bob and Michelle tell PEOPLE they are “heartbroken,” experts and even some relatives are left to wonder what has really been going on
Life looked idyllic for Joseph and Kendra Duggar in the years after their six-month courtship and 2017 nuptials — complete with a 22-person wedding party featured on TLC’s Counting On, the hit spinoff of 19 Kids and Counting.
The couple and their four young children settled into a tidy ranch in a new subdivision in Tontitown, Ark., close to the 97-acre compound where Joseph, 31, grew up as the third-oldest son of his devoutly religious reality TV family.
“He seemed like a nice guy,” one neighbor tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story of Joseph, who worked in real estate. “His kids are always up and down the sidewalks … playing like normal.”
But as the world has come to learn, the Duggars can hide dark secrets behind friendly faces.
On March 19 police searched Joseph and Kendra’s house one day after he was arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing a 9-year-old girl on vacation in Panama City Beach, Fla., in 2020 — at the same time that he and his siblings were still appearing on TLC, watched by millions.
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Joseph’s accuser told authorities he had covered them with a blanket, pulled her dress up and then inched his hand up her thighs and “grazed her vagina” while his “hand was outside her underwear,” according to his arrest warrant affidavit. The girl said he repeatedly molested her and later apologized, according to the affidavit, which notes his accuser’s dad got him to confess during a call with law enforcement.
Two days after Joseph was arrested, he and Kendra, a 27-year-old stay-at-home mom, were charged by Arkansas authorities with child endangerment and false imprisonment. (Neither of them has entered a plea to their Arkansas charges, though Joseph has pleaded not guilty in Florida; their attorneys or representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
A source close to the family maintains to PEOPLE that the welfare allegations are unrelated to the molestation case: “The arrest was a result of a home inspection and the door locks being on the exterior of the doors.”
If true, it would be a distressing echo of an earlier scandal: Joseph’s parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, used locks to keep their daughters separate from Joseph’s brother Josh after learning Josh had molested several of them as a teen. That abuse was disclosed publicly in 2015, only after the family had been on TV for 10 seasons. Later, in 2021, Josh was sent to prison for possessing child pornography.
The compounding revelations have eaten away at what remained of the family’s carefully crafted image of unity and virtue.
“I thought it was neat to have that many kids. I enjoyed watching all the shows,” says local David Pfahler. But now, he says, “I’m thinking: What else don’t we know about the Duggars?”
With public scrutiny mounting after a second Duggar has been accused of pedophilia, cousin Amy Duggar King questions the family’s fundamentalist upbringing.
“I’m sickened but not surprised,” says King, 39, an outspoken critic who remains in touch with Jill Duggar Dillard, Joseph and Josh’s sister.
“This reflects a deeper systemic issue,” King continues. “When they grow up around environments where the power is unchecked, and men are elevated and not held accountable, and silence is encouraged and rewarded, it creates the perfect conditions for abuse to happen and to continue.”
Credit: D Dipasupil/Getty
'What Are the Boundaries in That Family?'
“We aren’t professional parents,” matriarch Michelle, now 59, admitted to PEOPLE in 2009, not long after the premiere of the TLC series that made them famous.
She and husband Jim Bob, 60, and their ever-expanding brood — their show started out as 17 Kids… — captured viewers across the country with an unusual mix of wholesome attitudes, stringent morals and the daily drama of rearing enough kids to field an NBA roster (and then some), complete with thousand-dollar grocery bills and dozens of laundry loads.
The children were paired in a “buddy” system to help look after one another. It was all bliss, they insisted.
As time went on, fans got to follow the courtships and couplings of the older children, with chaperoned dates and rules such as no hand-holding. The result was a ratings bonanza. Daughter Jill’s 2014 wedding special, in which she and husband Derick shared their first kiss, earned an audience of 4.4 million people.
The family were unabashed about their views at a time when much else about American life was changing. The Duggars, who made their money in real estate, embraced chastity and gender separation while rebuffing modern pop culture and the progressive acceptance of LGBTQ people — all while maintaining sunny dispositions.
Credit: Little Duggar Family/Instagram
Self-described Baptists, Michelle and Jim Bob were inspired by Bill Gothard, founder of the Institute in Basic Life Principles. The Christian sect teaches that men are the head of the household. Wives, in turn, must be submissive and raise their children. Instead of using birth -control, they are encouraged to have as many kids as they feel their faith will provide.
“We don’t worry about what other people think,” Jim Bob previously told PEOPLE. “We consider each child a blessing from God.”
As with many other reality TV families, stardom revealed uglier truths. In 2015 son Josh, now 38, acknowledged that when he was a “young teenager,” he touched the breasts and genitals of five girls, including four of his sisters.
Later that year, he admitted to a pornography addiction and said he’d used a cheating website. TLC canceled 19 Kids… and launched Counting On, a sequel focused on the other siblings. That series ended in 2021 after Josh’s arrest. Jim Bob then tried and failed to be elected to the state Senate, having been a state representative in the 2000s.
With another son in custody, the clan finds itself under siege. A rep for Michelle and Jim Bob says they “are heartbroken over this entire situation. Right now they are focused on loving their family and helping Kendra and her children.”
Credit: JishPhoto/Shutterstock
Credit: Washington County Sheriff’s Department
Experts and even some relatives are left to wonder what was really going on behind closed doors.
“It’s crazy to think this is happening again,” says King, author of the memoir Holy Disruptor.
Shari Botwin, a social worker uninvolved in the case and author of Stolen Childhoods, can’t help but think, “What are the boundaries in that family?”
Baylor University history professor Beth Allison Barr sees another problem: “You have young men growing up in this religious culture that teaches them women’s bodies belong to them.”
A family source put it another way, bluntly describing their dynamics to PEOPLE in 2021: “Jim Bob always wants to sweep things under the rug.”
Credit: Courtesy of Prime Video ; The Duggar Family/Instagram
In a recent jailhouse call with his wife, Kendra, Joseph said that “reading the Bible has really been helpful,” allowing him to “not think about the situation.”
For her part, King still remembers the “really funny, go-lucky” cousin she was raised with, even as she is heartsick over the man police say he became.
“This pattern is just repeating itself,” she says. “Over and over.”
• Reporting by EILEEN FINAN, SARAH JONES, WENDY GROSSMAN KANTOR, CHRISTINE PELISEK, CHRIS SPARGO and GILLIAN TELLING
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