UNITED STATES
Washington Post
By Abby Ohlheiser
This week, a shocking series of allegation, apology and repercussions rocked one of the most famous families in reality television. Josh Duggar, the oldest son of the Duggar family, apologized Thursday after a tabloid published allegations that Duggar had molested multiple young girls as a teenager. A day later, TLC announced that the family’s show, “19 Kids and Counting,” which just finished airing its most recent season Tuesday, had pulled all episodes of the program off the air “effective immediately.”
Although the developments moved quickly, the allegations themselves have existed out of the public eye for more than a decade. A police report obtained by In Touch Weekly and the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette appears to detail those allegations, though the names of the suspect and all of the victims have been redacted from the report, because all were minors at the time.
In Touch Weekly, based on its unnamed sources, has said that the redacted suspect in the report is Josh Duggar. The Democrat-Gazette noted that the details of the report it has reviewed match statements made by the Duggars concerning the unspecified “wrongdoing” for which Josh Duggar has apologized. Although Josh Duggar was named by both publications and made statements of apology, he has not specifically addressed the molestation allegations.
What follows is a timeline of the case and some of its context, using the police report as a basis. The Democrat-Gazette has published an exhaustive investigation into the circumstances laid out in the report it obtained. The full document with police redaction was published by In Touch Weekly.
March 2002: This is when the Duggar parents say they were first made aware of allegations that a person in their home was improperly touching others, according to a 2006 statement to police. The couple added that the person confessed to the behavior in July of that same year. Josh Duggar would have been about 14 years old at the time these incidents occurred.
May 2002: Jim Bob Duggar, the family patriarch, who served in the state legislature as a representative from 1999-2002, loses a primary bid for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate.
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