Josh Duggar molested 5-year-old sister, new report details

By Martha Ross
San Jose Mercury News
June 3, 2015

http://www.mercurynews.com/celebrities/ci_28244481/josh-duggar-molested-5-year-old-sister-new

Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar are seen in a shot from their realityTV show "19 Kids and Counting."

A 15-year-old Josh Duggar confessed to molesting his 5-year-old sister while he held her on his lap and read her stories, according to a newly released police report obtained by In Touch Weekly.

The 2006 report also provides other new details about how his reality TV star parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar of TLC's "19 and Counting," failed to alert authorities for more than a year that their oldest son had inappropriately touched his sisters and a family friend, said the New York Daily News.

The new information comes the same day that Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar will address the allegations in a pre-taped interview with Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelly, airing tonight.

"We will sit down with Megyn Kelly on Fox to share our hearts with you about the pain that we walked through as a family 12 years ago, the tears we all shed and the forgiveness that was given," the Duggars posted on their website.

Kelly said the interview is the Duggars' attempt to save their show, according to Deadline Hollywood. TLC pulled repeats of the show from its lineup as 20 of its sponsors lined up to say they would not advertise on the program.

"I think this is the Duggars' effort to try to get out from under that pressure cooker," Kelly said of the interview. "They very much understand their show and reputation are on the line." She added that the Duggars believe the show "has a chance still. It's not totally done."

Whether their show has a chance of being saved in part rests on questions about how the couple responded to their oldest son's alleged serial gropings and whether there was an attempt to keep the allegations from becoming public, especially after their show became TLC's No. 1 hit and they became the public face of family-values conservatism.

According to the new police report, Josh, now a 27-year-old father of three, told his father at least three times that he had inappropriately touched the girls before his parents sought counseling for him.

The first of the alleged attacks occurred in 2002. Josh went to his father crying, according to what Jim Bob later told police. Josh told his father he had sneaked into his sisters' room at least four or five times at night and touched the girls "on the breasts and vaginal areas" as they slept. Josh also told his father he had fondled one of his sisters as she slept on the couch.

Josh again confessed to touching a family friend who was sleeping on the sofa, his father said. The Duggars said they punished their son after that admission. But the groping apparently continued. In March 2003, Josh said he molested his 5-year-old sister, by touching her chest and vagina. He ran out of the room crying and called his father to confess, Jim Bob later told police.

Rather than contact authorities at that time, Jim Bob and Michelle sought help from church officials. They agreed to send Josh to a Christian program in Little Rock that consisted of counseling and hard labor. After three months in the program, Jim Bob, Josh and their church elders reported the seven confessed attacks to police.

But the Arkansas state trooper they talked to, Joseph Hutchens, only gave Josh "a very stern talk about what might happen to him if he continued such behavior." Hutchens reportedly ordered no further punishment and didn't report the case to higher-ups. Hutchens later pleaded guilty to child pornography and is serving a 56-year sentence.

Officers re-examined the case in 2006, based on an anonymous tip on the state's child abuse hotline. But by then, the statute of limitations on the 2002 and 2003 allegations had expired.

In Touch said it learned from legal experts that Jim Bob and Michelle could have faced six years in prison for allowing abuse of a minor to continue, if the statute of limitations had not expired.