Dr Keith Ablow Takes on Robert Jeffress in an Incredible Interview on the Duggar Family

This is well worth your time. See Robert Jeffress explode on Dr Ablow. Guess who comes across more sensible?

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Dr Keith Ablow Takes on Robert Jeffress in an Incredible Interview on the Duggar Family — 164 Comments

  1. First?

    I kind of like Robert Jeffress. In a world of Southern Baptists taking the Know-Nothing approach to their theological identity, he takes every stereotype and revels in it.

  2. Interesting Jeffries try to confirm the girl’s statements that they had moved on, but the tears from the one prove differently. She still feels the shame involved with being a victim and shame that it’s now gone public.

    Secondly, the emphasis on these 5 victims who claim to not even known?? that it happened, is somewhat of a detour from the primary concern. That would be Josh and the probability or possibility for future victims; ie. the high rate of recidivism among juvenile sexual offenders.

    http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/res/rcd.html

  3. By the way, I have said it before and I will say it again that the Duggar parents owe a lot of people apologies:

    1. An apology is owed to the Springdale Police Chief in Arkansas who was required by Arkansas’ Freedom of Information Act to release a redacted copy of the police report (omitting the victims’ information) about Josh’s sex crimes against five victims, four of them his sisters.

    2. The Duggars owe an apology to the Arkansas social services agency that investigated son Josh for sex crimes and whom Josh sued when he was about 19 years old. Where did he get the money for an attorney? Where did he find an attorney? Obviously Mommy and Daddy gave Josh permission to do this and were probably even behind it.

    It’s despicable.

    The Duggar parents have EMBOLDENED their son Josh and protect him every step of the way from all consequences.

  4. I don’t know if these guys got paid extra to ‘lose it’ on TV but they put on a good show. I thought they both had some good things to say but of course that was not the idea. The idea was let’s have a cock fight. I don’t really like Jeffress and probably never will, but I never heard of Ablow until right now. So I google Ablow and we see MD/psych and TV personality. So Jeffress loses his temper, and Ablow seems to love that and eggs him on. I have no use for any psychiatrist who cannot keep control of himself in the face of somebody else’s emotions. Really Doc? Is there some excuse why you lost it also, other than that you enjoyed it and they paid you to do it?

    But then I never watch Fox including Hannity, so for all I know Hannity set it up that way and the guys performed as asked to.

  5. Bill M wrote:

    Please forgive me if I’m wrong, the article cited does not appear to refer to juvenile offenders.

    Sorry about that Bill. I saw this statistic and related it to the possibility of re-offense long after first offenses against children. That rate of recidivism would include a 14 yr. old offender imo.

    Prentky et al. (1997) examined recidivism rates on 115 child molesters and concluded that: (1) child molesters remain at risk to reoffend long after their discharge, in some cases 15-20 years after discharge; (2) there is a marked underestimation of recidivism rates.

    Likewise, a review by the American Psychological Association (2003) concluded that “the research demonstrates that even sexual offenses against children that occurred long ago evince a continuing risk of recidivism by the offender.”

  6. Having been a Catholic for many years, our church requires anyone having any or any potential contact with children at church to: a) undergo a criminal background check and b) complete VIRTUS our child safety program. The information from VIRTUS was that pedophiles don’t change. They can NOT be rehabilitated.

  7. Michaela wrote:

    And here is Christian conservative radio show host Janet Mefferd’s excellent article and the probative questions she would have asked the Duggars:
    http://janetmefferd.com/2015/06/questions-questions-what-i-would-have-asked-the-duggars/

    Mefferd nails it. It is the most thorough, investigatory treatment of the subject I have yet seen anywhere. There are couple of other discrepancies between what the Duggars said in the Fox interview and what was recorded in the police report. Jim Bob and Michelle are being quite disingenuous.

  8. Victorious wrote:

    That rate of recidivism would include a 14 yr. old offender imo.

    I’ve read evidence to the contrary but I’m not versed in this subject. I have found hard information on this story very difficult to sort through.

    This video is one of the few, if any, where both sides are represented. A longer discussion between two points of view would be helpful. In this case a five minute exchange, especially with one person being the Duggar’s pastor cannot yield much.

    I had picked up that the offenses were done when the guy was 13 and he voluntarily reported them when he turned 14, now I hear 15. This imprecision makes it hard to track, by pushing it to 15, if untrue, partially discredits the person making statement. At that age there is a big difference between 13, 14, and 15, pushing it unnecessarily to “a 15 year old man” is prejudicial.

    Just so no one questions my motives, I believe a serious offense was committed, and mistakes were then made in the handling. I also question putting your family on display. But where to next? I personally know some who believe the Duggar’s are victim of another media witch hunt. So? What did they expect, the term “media anal exam” has been around for decades and they should have been aware of it and they would be prime targets.

    I’m stuck in the middle and find it difficult to talk to either side without getting labeled and having someone become angry.

    As short as the discussion on Fox was, it would have improved if it was cut off a minute or two earlier when it became inflamed. Some of the inferences by the doctor were questionable, “can’t supervise” was poor, and then asserting the opposite, too much control, and then pastor was too deeply related to the family to deal well either, he was a poor choice. It became a sideshow.

    My experience with sexual abuse cases is limited to a few criminal cases I worked on and I wondered at the time that offenses committed as a minor would mark them for life. I’m still wrestling with that trade-off between future of the offender versus protection of potential victims in cases of juveniles.

    So just consider me someone out here in the hinterlands trying to understand, and precision is important.

    I will agree with the Doctor, “I wouldn’t make my family a reality show”.

  9. i think the damage done to these girls is quite more than first evident. they are complaining about dshs and insisting it was all taken care of and a police report made. the uproar is that the initial policeman talked to never made a report and is in prison for 65 years for porn or pedophelia. i doubt that dshs was involved early because the duggars waited 16 months to report anything. i wonder if the girls might have been actually thankful if dshs and police were involved when it happened and they were younger and not so influenced by the hush up of their parents. the fact that gosh was poster boy for saving yourself for marriage and boasted he hadnt even kissed a girl before his wife is showing that there is so much deceit that no one can be believed in this family.
    i really appreciated the dr on this clip pointing out that its not protecting the community and we dont know if Josh had or has reoffended with others he was around.

  10. If it helps at all back in my more political days I used to catch an occasional Hannity, or older Hannity and Colmes show. I found the formulation always to be the same, guests talked past each other, scoring points for their partisans. One would say something that was easily knocked down as untrue, yet the person would show up elsewhere, different show or network, and repeat the same discredited statement.

  11. Both of these men are controversial. Jeffers comes off like a ranting idiot. Ablow was pretty darn smirky, and after looking up information about him, I’m not impressed.

    I am most concerned for the care that the Duggar victims received. I am not convinced that they received licensed psychiatric care. They may have seen licensed counselors, but that could have been licensed biblical counseling which may be what the parents preferred. Because of the level of indoctrination with all things Gothard, I believe the Duggars are clueless about what the victims needed. The same goes for Josh.

    I have oodles of questions about how the parents, police (including current police authorities), and the child protections services in Arkansas has handled this situation. The entire mess is disturbing on many levels.

  12. Michaela wrote:

    The Duggar parents have EMBOLDENED their son Josh and protect him every step of the way from all consequences.

    GOD’s Speshul Chosen Can Do No Wrong.

  13. Dr. Keith Ablow can jump the shark but he was in the right this time. I am pleasantly surprised.

  14. I am not sure what kind of counseling would do the trick if somebody had their parents going around locking doors for safety reasons and they had to grow up like that. I am not comfortable with too much emphasis and either blame or credit placed on what kind of counseling went on in such ongoing circumstances as that.

    And, I am not too impressed with the current allegiance to what credentials somebody has who does the counseling as compared to what their philosophy is and which theories they buy into and how much experience they have with some particular kind of problem and what results they have actually seen and how long they have been doing this and, this is important, whether they have an axe to grind or an agenda to push.

    So I will say it again. Do not be impressed by the framed paper on the wall. Check out the individual before you tell him/her anything be they MDiv or MD/PsyD/MSW or your grandmother.

  15. elisabeth ann seton wrote:

    Having been a Catholic for many years, our church requires anyone having any or any potential contact with children at church to: a) undergo a criminal background check and b) complete VIRTUS our child safety program. The information from VIRTUS was that pedophiles don’t change. They can NOT be rehabilitated.

    I think they’re right to not rehabilitate them. It’s too risky for the children. Plus, I really think there are some lines that if you cross them, you’re probably never coming back.

    I think the saddest part is that the Catholic church seems to have learned better from all the scandals that have resulted from hiding pedophiles. Meanwhile, the Protestants continue to hypocritically pick at the scandals while they themselves are undergoing the same thing, only this time without seemingly learning from it. They keep justifying their own behavior, but Catholics are bad even when they repent and make moves fix things and protect children. By their own words, will they be judged. I might feel pity for these Protestant pastors for Judgement Day if it weren’t little children that were getting hurt.

  16. You know, when Keith Ablow is the voice of sanity, wow, just wow.

    And Robert Jeffress, those are not girls. They are young women, adults, married women! *rolls eyes*

  17. Jeffress was certainly angry. Kind of like he has a vested interest in the Duggar’s success. I wonder how much they “tithe” to his church!! How can he say that Ablow has no business in how the Duggar kids are raised when the parents are paid a handsome sum to parade them on television? Their children have to tow the line or their source of income dries up. The two Duggar girls are being revictimized by being coached on how they are suppose to feel about the situation. Can you imagine the blow back if one of the girls expressed anger towards her brother and his actions?

  18. Nancy wrote:

    So I will say it again. Do not be impressed by the framed paper on the wall. Check out the individual before you tell him/her anything be they MDiv or MD/PsyD/MSW or your grandmother.

    I have seen some really bad experiences, some diasters, with secular therapists, too. It is really hard for people to find the right fit and situation.

  19. I just watched the video.

    Bald doctor guy mentioned a few times how the Duggar parents won’t let the kids hold hands until they are engaged, which he thinks is weird.

    Preacher guy, Jeffress, blew a gasket over that, saying it’s their choice (the parent’s choice to raise the kids that way).

    I was raised in a family with somewhat similar dynamics and values as the Duggars. (Not nearly as severe, however; my mother did not forbid dating or hand holding, nor did she and dad have 19 kids. But there were some similarities going on.)

    One thing I can tell you is that even if the Duggar daughters were okay with Mom and Dad Duggar’s rules and worldviews growing up, and even a bit now in their 20s, wait until they get to their late 30s or early 40s.

    At some point, life events or experience will cause them to reEvaluate how they were raised, and they may end up rejecting much of Ma and Pa Duggar’s values and opinions and down right resent how Ma and Pa raised them. It may never happen, but it just might.

    It sure happened with me. It wasn’t until I got older I realized that my parents don’t know everything and got quite a few things wrong, things which are still causing problems for me today, that I am working through. (I love my parents, but I can see how they made some very big mistakes in parenting.)

    I wouldn’t be surprised if the Duggar kids all go through something similar when they hit my age.

    I definitely see the dangers in how the Duggars are raising their kids.
    They may think they are protecting their children or instilling good morals in them, but in reality, they are making them open to different problems as they grow older.

  20. Additional thoughts about the video.

    Someone in the video mentioned that the Duggars went to the police.

    What police? Was this a reference to the state trooper who was, I think, a family friend, and who later himself was arrested for pedophilia?

    That trooper later got out of jail for pedophilia, re-offended, then went back to jail for the new offense.

    IIRC, he is the only police that the Duggar family ever consulted. I don’t really think that guy counts as “going to the police.”

    The preacher guy, Jeffress, was talking about how Christians believe they can turn their problems over to Jesus and Jesus makes everything all groovy.

    Okay, but what many conservative Christians don’t understand is that turning your issues over to Jesus is not an instant cure.

    Healing is a process, and as conservative Christian psychiatrists explained in one book I read, healing sometimes involves a Christian opening up his/her pain with another caring person.

    Healing may take months or years, and cannot fully be done by Bible reading, prayer, faith in Jesus, and church attendance alone.

    A lot of Christians who think like Jeffress does on this subject do not appreciate any of that, so if you are still hurting over the same problem X number of years later, they will get short and snippy with you and chew you out, because you are not healing at a rate they find acceptable.

    I think Bald guy was correct that the Duggar parents and the family are naive.

  21. Daisy brings up a point I’ve noticed for years:

    A lot of kids go through their rebellious phase in their teens. Some get to it in their college years.

    There seems to be a growing number of people on the fundamentalist side of evangelicalism who are going through it in their late 20s or 30s. I can name quite a few people in my life where it took them until their late 20s to really start realizing that the fundamentalist structure they were fed isn’t just a little flawed: it was filled with naivety at best, lies at worst.

  22. Ann wrote:

    Can you imagine the blow back if one of the girls expressed anger towards her brother and his actions?

    I do wonder how free the daughters feel to express any anger they may be feeling?

    Sadly, though, if that family is similar to mine, then they have been taught to think having anger, feeling anger, or expressing anger is sinful, unChristian, and wrong.

    So, they may have repressed any anger and convinced themselves that they really do love ol’ Josh and have forgiven him.

    Like I said above, just give them another 10 – 20 years, or a catastrophic life event, and they may reExamine how their parents raised them, and then a ton of repressed anger (over Josh and whatever else) will boil over and probably become public.

    One of them may write a tell-all book many years from now exposing everything and their regrets, or do a tell-all interview with Oprah.

  23. Jeffries really comes off bad. He is trying hard to make this a liberal/conservative issue. It is a pedophile issue.

    His focus on victim forgiveness is so typical of evangelicalism. As if their forgiveness stops his problem. I get so weary of the cheap grace shitck.

  24. David wrote:

    A lot of kids go through their rebellious phase in their teens. Some get to it in their college years.
    There seems to be a growing number of people on the fundamentalist side of evangelicalism who are going through it in their late 20s or 30s.

    The Duggar sons and daughters may be pretty enmeshed with their parents and other siblings, and combined with teaching that it’s wrong to show anger (I am assuming this part of it), they may never have become their own persons.

    Meaning, I am betting most of the Duggar kids never went through a normal rebellious phase during their teen years, where they learned to be their own persons and never separated from their parents.

    That is part of what happened to me. I didn’t go through my teen age phase, so to speak, until my late 30s or early 40s, where I have learned it’s okay for me to be my own person, to show anger, to disagree with my parent’s views and values, etc.

    I was a very, very obedient kid in my youth (even in my 20s). I was very obedient to my parents and to other adults, so I never learned to be me. I was too busy obeying and pleasing all the adults and other people around me.

    I’m just seeing some of these types of things from my own life show up in the articles and videos I’ve been seeing about the Duggars. (I’ve never watched their TV show, though.)

  25. mirele wrote:

    And Robert Jeffress, those are not girls. They are young women, adults, married women! *rolls eyes*

    I’m glad someone else commented on this. Calling adult women ‘girls’ is demeaning and infantilizing. He’d never have considered calling present-day Josh a boy….

    (Also: Jeffress isn’t alone in this–females are called ‘girls’ at much older ages than males are called boys. It’s a problem).

  26. Nancy wrote:

    Check out the individual before you tell him/her anything be they MDiv or MD/PsyD/MSW or your grandmother.

    Agree!

  27. Well at least they weren’t out in the woods learning West African vocals and dance rhythms from Tituba.
    That might have caused Jeffress to really come unglued.

  28. The last remark at the end had us laughing despite the seriousness of the topic. Does just prove why pastors shouldn’t presume to play law or counselor.

  29. Kin wrote:

    “If I heard her correctly, Megyn Kelly said towards the end of her interview with the Duggar husband and wife that her statistic source says 85 to 90% of people like Josh do not return to such activities when they are adults.”

    Yes she did. And on the second show (The one with the Duggar women) Kelly had a expert in the last segment (one who had published a book on the subject). Kelly repeated the claim of the study and asked if essentially it was a reputable study and the expert said yes it was. Sorry – I don’t have the name of the expert.

  30. I don’t think that Jeffress meant to demean anybody by calling them girls. That is a common and usual expression around here-using ‘girls’ and ‘boy’s speaking of a group who at one time were either children or youth together in an identifiable group.

    For example one might be talking about a bunch of middle aged men who had formerly been in scout group xyz and one might be wondering how they turned out. One would say something like, ‘well I lost track of joe but the rest of those boys did real well for themselves’. ‘Those boys’ by then being the lawyer, the banker and the local school principal. What Jeffress said was exactly that sort of thing-a group who were children together and in an identifiable group together (Duggars who were abused by their brother) and were now grown and he called them ‘girls’ even as adults.

    Like I said, I really don’t like Jeffress, and I never thought I would defend anything he said, but there is no real reason to take offense at that particular comment because that is a common way of speaking and is not meant to denigrate anybody. Perhaps it is a true southernism, because I never heard anybody object to it in this context before.

    The other context in which grown women are called ‘girls’ is when grown women call each other that. It carries with it a feeling of a sense of youth carried forward in spite of the cares of middle age and is a carefree sort of comment. It means something like ‘let’s remind ourselves that life has not dragged us down and once and still we remind ourselves of that.’ Sort of. One might go to book club with the ‘ladies’ and then the ‘girls’ of that book club might go to Vegas for the weekend some time.

    Now notice that we also call grown women ‘ladies’ and I have heard some objections to that. Another term might be ‘that bunch.’ I say ‘those guys’ sometimes which is a direct affront to local custom, and mostly I say it for pure cussedness and also to emphasize that I am ‘not from around here’ but I am very careful to whom I say it and under what circumstance I say it.

    How to talk in the south is not mostly about pronunciation but is rather a complex use of terms and tone of voice and body language and timing just as much as it is how long to hold a vowel sound and when to do it and a huge sensitivity as to when to say which to whom within the culture. This varies significantly from region to region. Sometimes southerners use southernisms in order to poke at some non-southerner without the other person knowing they have been poked or just how they have been poked, but ‘girls’ is not in that category.

  31. never needed more reason to disavow any association with Christian church culture. sanctimonious chattering chipmunk with a side part

  32. Kin wrote:

    Victorious wrote:
    ie. the high rate of recidivism among juvenile sexual offenders.
    http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/res/rcd.html
    If I heard her correctly, Megyn Kelly said towards the end of her interview with the Duggar husband and wife that her statistic source says 85 to 90% of people like Josh do not return to such activities when they are adults.

    I’d be interested to know what that study is. In my own training, just a bit on young people with sexually problematic behaviours, it is the function of the behaviour that is looked at very closely as it can be very different form similar behaviours in adults. Was Josh Duggars behaviour an expression of curiosity (exacerbated by his ridiculous upbringing) or an expression of a fixed sexual preference for underage females, or something else? That’s where the key as as to whether it will continue – for example if a YP masturbates at school to deal with anxiety (more common with Special Educational Needs) the function of the behaviour is primarily anxiety soothing. What needs to be done here is the anxieties to be explored & dealt with appropriately, rather than the behaviour just punished. Who around Josh Duggar is competent to help him without it all getting bound up in some pre-written religious script?

  33. Nancy wrote:

    I don’t think that Jeffress meant to demean anybody by calling them girls. That is a common and usual expression around here-using ‘girls’ and ‘boy’s speaking of a group who at one time were either children or youth together in an identifiable group.

    I’m sorry if I overreacted to this. I’m not a southerner, and so I may have reacted to something that isn’t part of my dialect. Given that it seems to be a broadly accepted way to refer to women in certain contexts in the South, I’m sorry for reading too much into it. It is also true that there are contexts in which calling adult women ‘girls’ wouldn’t bother me so much, such as having a ‘girls night’.

    Upon reflection, here’s what I think I was reacting to. We have a white, older male pastor who is clearly of the more complementarian bent defending the choices the Duggar parents made, and saying that he sees two well-adjusted ‘girls’. (Paraphrasing because I don’t want to go back and watch the video again). Given that these women are dealing with presumably some of the most traumatic incidents in their lives in a public space, and given that they (a) had no say about having these details revealed, that (b) much of the attention has focused on Josh and the parents, and that (c) they have pretty much been expected to be ‘on message’, it seemed to me that calling them ‘girls’ was an indication of how little agency and respect they’ve been given in this particular story. This was probably unconscious on the part of Jeffress, but I did think it added insult to injury, particularly because he was talking about them today, not them 10 years ago.

    Again, I may have overreacted, but in the larger context of the interview, purity culture, and the Quiverfull movement, it seemed to me like a linguistic signal that these women aren’t seen as women with the right to their own ideas, opinions, and reactions, but that they were being positioned as ‘girls’ who take their cues from the world around them, and not as mature, responsible, free agents in their own right.

  34. @ Megan:

    In the interest of carrying on the conversation, and not specifically aimed at Megan, but at the same time recognizing her viewpoint, which I find to be both thoughtful and good hearted, let me say:

    Part 1

    Well, Jeffress has made his fame and fortune out of being some sort of jerkizoid in public. I have no idea what he is or is not as a pastor or an administrator, but his public persona is certainly off putting to me. And possibly he was seeing the two people as less than, but then part of the current hue and cry about the Duggar lifestyle is that it turns out chronologically adult persons who seem to be less than if the measurement is based on free agent autonomy. So maybe he sees that and thinks it is right, and others see that and think it is wrong. I have never been a part of it so I have no personal observations one way or the other in that specific thing. My family lifestyle is vastly different from the Duggars.

    But there is one thing that you said that I think bears discussion. You are saying that he (Jeffress) did not appear to treat these women as autonomous and responsible adults. Maybe that is so, but he was the one who wanted to talk about the idea that people do not have to be perpetual victims. At the same time I thought that Ablow was the one wanting to see these women as less than, naive was one thing he emphasized, and he criticized whatever counseling they may have had because he did not know what it had been and apparently whether he approved of it or not. Sort of, nobody checked with him about what was done regarding the female children who were abused at the time. And he criticized their upbringing as potentially sexually crippling (repression was the word he used for Josh). I did not hear ’empowerment’ talk regarding the two women from Ablow.

  35. @ Nancy:

    Part2

    I am thinking that people can’t much have it both ways. Either there is the potential to heal or there is not. He (Jeffress) was the one who seemed to be saying that the potential existed. Only if the potential is thought to be there does there then come the analysis as to how best to achieve that and how to measure the relative success of such a process. I probably would not agree with Jeffress as to how it would best be achieved, but I do agree that there need not be an emphasis on perpetual victimhood in every case.

    Let me say one reason that I think that. Some of the people who have the more drastic statistics come up with data that looks like massive percentages of the public have been abused in some way but nobody seems to know who all that may be. Ummm. It almost looks like they are saying that there are massive numbers of victims who apparently don’t have residual symptoms or dysfunction enough to be identified in their adult years. So, are we saying that if a person’s abuse is not recognized that person may go on to heal but that if a victim is identified as a victim then that is their identity the rest of their lives? If that is the case then our society needs to be very cautious as to how to handle these cases so as not to inflict further damage or inhibit healing for the abused persons.

    It is a pity that there seem to have evolved two camps on this matter, especially since everybody emphasizes that we do not have all the information we need to solve everything that needs solved.

  36. @ Nancy:
    I’m also replying in the interest of continuing the conversation, which I do think bears on larger issues around women, abuse, and more conservative Christian circles.

    I’m going to lay some cards on the table in order to help contextualize my previous (and forthcoming) comments.

    My experience with non-mainline Protestant Christianity (the church I was raised in) is limited to my involvement in an evangelical parachurch organization in college, working for said organization in Japan for a couple of years after college, and two years in a PCA church in West Texas while I was working on my M.A. In total, this is about nine years, but because I went to college in New York City and then lived in Japan, I have never really lived in predominately conservative Christian cultures. While I was in college, and heavily involved in this parachurch organization, I also dealt with sexual abuse in my past. I had been molested by two strangers in my early teens, and although I was externally functioning normally, the abuse did cause internal damage. I was–apparently–lucky that I was in a Christian community that reacted well to this. People made sure I got good counseling, and I was never blamed for the abuse. In fact, that was one of the first and most consistent things I was told. It wasn’t my fault. Today, I think the wounds have largely healed (and expressions of sympathy, while nice, aren’t necessary). I bring this up to say two things: (a) abuse takes a toll, whether it’s visible or not, and (b) it is possible to heal and move on. To do the latter, though, the abuse survivor needs to have their right to agency, to decision making, and to process the incidents affirmed. What concerns me is that these women haven’t been given that opportunity, and the only way out of something like this is through it. You have to be given space to react, process, and heal, and that is a personal, private, process.

    Back to the clip. I agree that Ablow was inflammatory in his own right, and intentionally so. I think that’s a problem; frankly, I think the clip is a good example of many of the problems with public discourse in this country. The difference in my mind is that Ablow at least recognized that there are real problems with what happened and how it was handled, and Jeffress doesn’t seem to get that. The overall tone of the interview was that the ‘girls’ had forgiven Josh, and that should be the end of it. Ultimately, there is some truth to that–the party who has been wronged/violated/sinned against gets to pick how they respond to the perpetrator. And external observers don’t get to judge them for how they respond. *However*, there is plenty of evidence that the systems of the IFB/Quiverfull/Complementarian movements are toxic, and tend to be prone to sin-leveling and cheap grace. Thus, it’s also fairly clear that forgiveness was likely expected and not freely offered. It’s also fairly clear that the Duggar parents didn’t handle this particular situation well–and have continued to minimize the severity of the offense(s).

    Ultimately, supporting abuse victims/survivors does mean empowering them–but part of that means recognizing that healing from abuse is an individual process and the victim (for lack of a better word) gets to have the final say in when and how s/he deals with it. Healing and empowerment are possible–abuse doesn’t need to color every decision you make and every interaction you have. However, until it’s dealt with, it will lurk in the background tinging everything. The most insidious thing about it is that the tint it gives to the world becomes your new normal, and you can (appear to) function quite naturally. It’s only when you’ve dealt with it it that the extent of the damage becomes evident.

    My main concern is that these women have never had the space and the opportunity to process what happened to them outside of a system that minimized the severity of the offenses and that at least partially blamed them for the abuse. What I would really like to see is for them to be given permission to process, heal, and move on without having to defend the system in which they were raised, Josh, or their parents’ decisions.

  37. @ Megan:

    Oh, my. I did not know that anybody was blaming the children for what happened. That certainly needs addressed and corrected.

  38. I totally agree with Ablow suggesting the Duggar kids are not being raised in an emotionally healthy environment, especially the females.

    From my perspective, I think the show focuses on sex. I think the older girls have been exploited for their virginity, put on parade as objects of desire. ( and Jim Bob and family made a lot of many, received lots of freebie trips, goods)

    Dig deep into the Duggars following the teachings of Gotthard and their close association with Vision Forum and you will find very ugly, dark underpinning .

  39. Megan wrote:

    I’m glad someone else commented on this. Calling adult women ‘girls’ is demeaning and infantilizing. He’d never have considered calling present-day Josh a boy….
    (Also: Jeffress isn’t alone in this–females are called ‘girls’ at much older ages than males are called boys. It’s a problem).

    I am guilty of this. From my perspective, I mean it as a compliment (even if an awkward one-implying that she looks young). But I am learning that how a message is received trumps the intent of the message. Who cares how I meant it to be taken, how it was taken might as well be how I meant it. Plus, I don’t want to appear as if I am an arrogant patriarchal buffoon.

  40. Nancy wrote:

    How to talk in the south is not mostly about pronunciation but is rather a complex use of terms and tone of voice and body language and timing just as much as it is how long to hold a vowel sound and when to do it and a huge sensitivity as to when to say which to whom within the culture. This varies significantly from region to region. Sometimes southerners use southernisms in order to poke at some non-southerner without the other person knowing they have been poked or just how they have been poked, but ‘girls’ is not in that category.

    Absolutely. Everything you said. In fact, I’m always a little surprised when I see complaints about the word “ladies” because in my culture, that’s the appropriate word to use for a group of women.

  41. L. Lee wrote:

    Kin wrote:
    “If I heard her correctly, Megyn Kelly said towards the end of her interview with the Duggar husband and wife that her statistic source says 85 to 90% of people like Josh do not return to such activities when they are adults.”
    ———————-
    Yes she did. And on the second show (The one with the Duggar women) Kelly had a expert in the last segment (one who had published a book on the subject). Kelly repeated the claim of the study and asked if essentially it was a reputable study and the expert said yes it was. Sorry – I don’t have the name of the expert.

    Can someone explain if this was in the context of 1. all pedophiles, or 2. only the specific group of teenagers or teens who fondle siblings?

    The reason I ask is that everything else I’ve ever read on the topic of people who molest children (not necessarily their own family members, but other people) is that it’s the opposite situation, that they often go on to molest other kids at a very high rate.

  42. A few points:

    From what I’ve seen no one is blaming the victims in this case.

    If you watch the interview with Jill and Jessa, they make it very clear it was their choice to forgive Josh–in other words, they felt they had their right to agency.

    One of the problems that emerges in this case is that it is not helpful to speak only in broad terms. “Sexual abuse,” “child molestation,” and other terms are so broad they cover very horrific cases of rape and also brief instances of touching–the latter being what happened in the Duggar case.

    It is important to note that none of the victims was even aware of what had happened. I did not realize that until I listened to the interview with Jessa and Jill, because so much of the coverage of this has been sensationalized.

    Jessa and Jill said they were asleep and didn’t even know. They said the others were briefly touched in such a way that they didn’t realize it was improper. Jessa and Jill said Josh knew he intended to be touching the girls in an improper way, but the girls didn’t realize.

    For those–such as Janet Mefferd, linked above–who seem to find it astounding that the other victims could have been awake but not really realized, the problem is that they are picturing some form of “sexual abuse” much more graphic than what happened in this case. That is the problem with using such a broad term, which, tough technically true is nevertheless misleading about this case. The Duggar parents mentioned that one of the safeguards they implemented was a rule of no boy and girl hiding together in a game of hide and seek. You can easily imagine a scenario where an older boy and younger sister are hiding together in some small space, perhaps behind a piece of furniture or in a closet. The boy knows his hands are deliberately in a wrong place, but the girl is wrapped up in the game, and she just thinks they are clinging together to be smaller and less visible. Similarly with reading a book while a younger girl is sitting on his lap–he knows he is resting his hand where it shouldn’t be, but the girl is focused on the story and not noticing. I have no idea whether these instances happened in the Duggar case. My point is that it is easy to imagine scenarios where victims are not really aware–and again highlighting how unhelpful it is to use one broad term for very different things.

    It is also very clear from the interview with Jessa and Jill that the most traumatic thing for them–by far, “a thousand times worse”–is the releasing of the report they had been assured would be kept confidential and the accompanying media coverage of the last couple of weeks. The second most traumatic thing for them was having to talk to the police/DHS in the first place, and the least traumatic thing was the actual instance of touching.

    Watching the interview with Jessa and Jill was very eye-opening to me, because they painted such a different picture from what had been presented in the media.

  43. @Daisy

    My understanding of the expert at the end of the Kelly interview was that when it is a case of a young teen, such as Josh Duggar, basically being curious about girls, they can change their behavior as they mature. A teenager of 14 touching a younger girl is a very different thing than a man of 27 touching a young girl. It is the grown men who are attracted to children who continue to reoffend.

  44. Sharon wrote:

    Jessa and Jill said they were asleep and didn’t even know. They said the others were briefly touched in such a way that they didn’t realize it was improper. Jessa and Jill said Josh knew he intended to be touching the girls in an improper way, but the girls didn’t realize.

    You obviously didn’t read the police report. If you had, you would know that the stories included touching under clothing while the victim was awake…going to the father crying about what the perp had done…and the fact that the abuse continued for an entire year before the parents decided to do anything about it.

  45. Further to my most recent comment: Again, this highlights the problem of using the term “pedophile” to refer to Josh. True pedophiles–grown men–do reoffend at a high rate. Josh was not a pedophile. He was a 14-yr-old touching girls a few years younger than himself. Jessa and Jill specifically objected to his being called a pedophile.

  46. @ Sharon:

    Your comment is well thought out and reasonable. But I respectfully disagree for two reasons.

    1. They are public personalities. Like it or not, they have subjected themselves to a higher degree of scrutiny. I don’t care to blame the younger sisters for this, but Mr. And Mrs. Dugger.

    2. By his own confession, Josh did something inappropriate. He broke the letter of the law and it seems to have been covered up. I can’t say I would have turned in my own son, but I CAN say that I would never use my family in a reality show for money.
    I also find it interesting that (as in the comments above) the intent of a person calling women “girls” is offensive to some, so we (rightly) avoid it regardless of our intent in using the word “girls.” But on the other end of the spectrum, people want to ignore Josh Duggar’s intent and insist that the victims are (or should feel) ok about it.

  47. Having read up on Ablow a bit, I was not too impressed with previous statements – he is the typical Foxhead – only on air to get up the emotions of the “true believers”. Neither was I impressed with how he goaded Jeffress near the end of the clip.

    But Jeffress – words fail me. He is the personification of Poe’s law ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law ). And he didn’t improve on me after reading up on him.

  48. Bill M wrote:

    If it helps at all back in my more political days I used to catch an occasional Hannity, or older Hannity and Colmes show. I found the formulation always to be the same, guests talked past each other, scoring points for their partisans. One would say something that was easily knocked down as untrue, yet the person would show up elsewhere, different show or network, and repeat the same discredited statement.

    According to Dr. Jeffress web site, “Dr. Jeffress has made more than 1500 guest appearances on various radio and television programs and regularly appears on major mainstream media outlets..” There should be no doubt that Dr. Jefress is experienced, knows what he is doing and how to express himself. Yes, it reminds me of professional wrestling. Controversies are created to keep the wrestlers relevant. The show then moves on to the next venue and the controversy continues. Dr. Jefrees vs Dr. Ablow is just entertainment, nothing more.

  49. Joe2 wrote:

    Yes, it reminds me of professional wrestling. Controversies are created to keep the wrestlers relevant. The show then moves on to the next venue and the controversy continues. Dr. Jefrees vs Dr. Ablow is just entertainment, nothing more.

    It’s Wrestlecrap for Christianese Culture Warriors.
    http://www.wrestlecrap.com/

  50. Mae wrote:

    From my perspective, I think the show focuses on sex. I think the older girls have been exploited for their virginity, put on parade as objects of desire

    Christians(TM) are just as screwed-up sexually as everyone else these days, just in a different (and usually opposite) direction.

  51. I didn’t read the police report. Doing so would have seemed a further violation of the victims to me after I heard Jessa and Jill speak. I was going by what they said. The father did mention that one instance was under clothes, but both he and Jessa and Jill said in all cases Josh told on himself, so I am surprised and saddened to hear otherwise.

  52. I think Dr Keith Ablow, laid it on the line. He believes that Josh has a serious problem that has been covered up by the family. I tend to agree with him.

    What really makes me raise my eyebrows is that parents made a decision to have a reality show based on their family. They stressed sexual purity by not even their kids to go to the beach because of bathing suits! Yet, they knew about this. No parent in their right mind would expose their kids to scrutiny knowing they had this in the background.

    They knew about this issue and yet they chose to open their lives to a media which would check them out. My question is, “Why?” I believe that there ism ore to this story than is being revealed/ Josh Duggar made a joke on TV about incest in Arkansas. knowing he had issues. Why is that? Is he trying to tell us something? This was after the infamous incident. The fact he could joke about it is worrisome.

    http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/25/josh-duggar-incest-joke-video-2008

    As of right now, I do not believe that we have the whole story. My guess is more has been covered up in that family and a number of lawyers, psychiatrists, etc seem to think so.

    As for the rates of juvenile sex offenders who go onto offend, the data is in its infancy. If you look at the study that discusses a 10% rate, those offender were only followed for “several years.”I would not hang my hat on those numbers. Also, the question comes up as to whether or not he received proper counseling. The Duggars claim he has but what does that word mean to them?

  53. @ Gus:

    Thanks for the link to Poe’s law. I have heard it referred to in various ways but never knew what it meant. Having a sarcastic bent, I will henceforth use the smiley emoticon when speaking in jest. 🙂

  54. @ Sharon:

    As I said above, I was raised in a family that was a very watered down version of the Duggars.

    As such, the Duggar girls likely have been conditioned to be willing victims of abuse, and they have been taught it is wrong to show anger, feel anger, express it, and have gotten the idea from their parents that it is wrong to “rock the boat.”

    They have been raised to automatically forgive any abusers and water down any transgressions.

    They have probably repressed any upset or angry feelings about the inappropriate touching, (or whatever phrase you prefer), to such a degree that they may well be in denial about it now, and may be for years to come.

    When they get older, and they reflect on things, and they separate from their parents, instead of going along with what Ma and Pa Duggar raised them to believe in, they may reject what they were taught and realize what their brother did to them was horrible, more horrible than they can admit to themselves now.

    They are probably sitting on a huge amount of repressed anger, and it won’t come out until 10, 15, 20 years later.

    You said,

    It is also very clear from the interview with Jessa and Jill that the most traumatic thing for them–by far, “a thousand times worse”–is the releasing of the report they had been assured would be kept confidential and the accompanying media coverage of the last couple of weeks.

    Probably because in their culture, women are blamed for men’s sexual sins.

    A lot of Christian girls and women (especially in Gothardism or mainstream evangelicalism) are taught that they entice men into sexual sin by mere fact of being a woman or a girl, and by even something as innocent as wearing a blouse with spaghetti straps.

    I think the media reporting on this may be important, since there could have been other victims. The parents of any other kids who were around Josh have the right to know.

    You said,

    Watching the interview with Jessa and Jill was very eye-opening to me, because they painted such a different picture from what had been presented in the media.

    I don’t think they themselves have a clear picture of what happened.

    Growing up in a family like that, you get a messed up perspective of things, and things don’t become more clear until you separate from your family and their world view, which may not happen for many years.

    You can marry, move out of the house, but still cling to your Mom and Dad’s religious views for years afterwards.

    You said,

    It is important to note that none of the victims was even aware of what had happened. …
    Jessa and Jill said they were asleep and didn’t even know.

    Was the baby sitter Josh molested awake?

    Maybe I am mistaken, but I thought at least one of the 5 victims was awake when the touching happened, because one of the reports said that she ran and told Dad Duggar about it later?

    If they were asleep and didn’t know, how did the parents find out, did Josh confess to them he had done so?

  55. Sharon wrote:

    Josh was not a pedophile. He was a 14-yr-old touching girls a few years younger than himself. Jessa and Jill specifically objected to his being called a pedophile.

    I don’t know what all the professional therapeutic counseling terms are, the jargon, but I use the term because it’s short and easy for me to type.

    But does anyone know for sure if he’s not molesting kids now, or that there were no more victims after he turned 15?

    I’ve read that some pedophiles do start when they are ten year old or as teens, and they continue into their 20s, 30s, and older.

  56. Bilbo Skaggins wrote:

    By his own confession, Josh did something inappropriate. H

    I worked with substance abusers many years ago. I learned something that has stuck with me for years. Abuser rarely tell the full truth. They will often affirm a small part of the truth but try to present themselves in the most flattering light possible which is rather amusing when they arrived at treatment facility strung out.

    We had to get an idea as to their actual usage in order to give them the appropriate medications to begin withdrawal. We knew that the vast majority of them would understate how much they used. So, instead of asking them point blank, we would overstate what we think they were using. So, I would say “You look like a 2 quarts a day whiskey user and you pop a bunch of Valiums on top of that.”

    The person would look offended and say “I only drink I quart a day and just have a six pack of beer and take a sleeper at night.” Then we would have a closer estimate to their usage,

    I do not believe that we have the full story from any of the Duggars. It is most likely worse than what is being presented. And I don’t really care if they are Christians. Christians can lie just like everyone else.

  57. @ Elizabeth Lee:
    i have to admit that I was startled that they put locks on the doors of the girls room. That tells me they were quite worried.

    This reminds me of an incident at an SGM church in which the father was meeting his daughter. The mother was told to return home to the husband and put locks on the doors of the bathroom and her daughter’s room to keep him out since she was tempting him by taking showers in the house and sleeping in nightclothes.

  58. Sharon wrote:

    A teenager of 14 touching a younger girl is a very different thing than a man of 27 touching a young girl

    I disagree. How many teen boys who are 14-15 (he was 15 as it continued) do you know that touch their sisters? I raised a teen boy and knew his friends and I can assure that it is not normal. It is very worrisome and Dr Ablow said so as well.

    It is normal for 5 year older to do this, not teens. This guy went for his sisters. Thank heavens he went for the girls. If he had done it with boys they would have crucified him already. But, sisters- not so much.

  59. Mae wrote:

    From my perspective, I think the show focuses on sex. I think the older girls have been exploited for their virginity, put on parade as objects of desire. ( and Jim Bob and family made a lot of many, received lots of freebie trips, goods)

    I totally agree with you. There is something weird going on in that house.

  60. Daisy wrote:

    At some point, life events or experience will cause them to reEvaluate how they were raised, and they may end up rejecting much of Ma and Pa Duggar’s values and opinions and down right resent how Ma and Pa raised them. It may never happen, but it just might.

    Daisy, I think this is happening right now. With the Duggar TV empire a smoldering heap they have to be thinking something is wrong. Denial and a persecution complex will only hold together so long.

  61. Sharon wrote:

    I didn’t read the police report. Doing so would have seemed a further violation of the victims to me after I heard Jessa and Jill speak. I was going by what they said.

    I grew up in a family somewhat like theirs, and theirs is ten times more extreme than mine.

    Taking that into consideration, the Duggar girls have probably been conditioned to be willing victims and complicit in their own mistreatment.

    It may not be until years later they confront their upbringing and realize what happened. The Duggar daughters may not be in touch with their own feelings right now.

    Christian girls in families like that are often taught to put self last, put others first, which means their socialization makes them out of touch with who they are and to recognize when they are being taken advantage of. They know what everyone around them needs, wants, and feels, but not what they need, want, and feel.

    If that day ever comes, when they realize what happened, they will have to work through a large amount of regret and repressed anger at their parents, their brother, themselves, Christianity, and God.

    What I am trying to get at is that I don’t totally trust what the Duggar girls are saying or feeling right now, because I doubt it’s very accurate.

    They may sincerely feel as though they are okay now and have moved on, but are in denial.

    I grew up like this, and it wasn’t until years later (and after my mother died), and I did some serious soul searching, I realized how things had really been in my family.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if the Duggar girls are living in the same dynamics, and again, my family was not nearly as bad as theirs in the severity, so they are probably in deeper in this than I ever was.

  62. Megan wrote:

    I agree that Ablow was inflammatory in his own right, and intentionally so.

    I am going to disagree. I have been following Robert Jeffress for a long while now. We have written about him on the blog. He comes across as both controlling and arrogant. He often dominates the discussion by expecting people to take a back seat to him when he declares his POV. His comment that the Duggars attend his church when they come to Dallas was gratuitous and self-serving

    I watched Ablow own Jeffress. Jeffress for once did not know how to handle the situation. Both my husband and I were impressed with Ablow’s discussion. I actually like him and have listened to him on a number of occasions. i was grateful that he took on Jeffress. I think he knew he had done so as well by his grin towards the end of the segment. Finally, someone did what needed to be done. I bet Jeffress will avoid being on the same show with him again since Ablow owned him.

  63. Elizabeth Lee wrote:

    Absolutely. Everything you said. In fact, I’m always a little surprised when I see complaints about the word “ladies” because in my culture, that’s the appropriate word to use for a group of women.

    It is good to understand about the south and how they view words and the use of words. It would also be good for people in the south to understand what those words might mean or how they are perceived by people they are speaking to you. I have a problem when men are referred to as men, but women are ladies. I have no problem with ladies and gentlemen combined. Having worked in office environments, the term girls when referring to women in the work place is derogatory(.)

    I’m afraid that what southerners view as quaint speech comes across quite different to me. I must have watched movies where the southern accent and dialect was part of the persona of a creepy manipulator. I can’t seem to tell the sincerity or insincerity (always alot of mysteriousness) of the person speaking with a southern drawl. This is bothersome to me, to say the least. I did visit with South Carolina for two months as a young teen. When I went home everyone was asking me why I was talking “like that.” I had no idea I was talking “like that!” I had assimilated quite well 🙂

  64. Daisy wrote:

    But does anyone know for sure if he’s not molesting kids now, or that there were no more victims after he turned 15?
    I’ve read that some pedophiles do start when they are ten year old or as teens, and they continue into their 20s, 30s, and older.

    According to the Wikipedia article on pedophilia, it’s essentially a sexual orientation. Pedophiles “discover” that they are sexually attracted to prepubescent children. Some of them never act on it. Some are sexually attracted to both adults and children and others only to children. Some evidence suggests that it may have a genetic connection.

    Not all children who molest other children around the time of puberty are true pedophiles. They’re just sexually curious and other children are available.

    We have no way of knowing if Josh Duggar is sexually attracted to prepubescent children. I hope he is not.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia

  65. I totally agree with Dee that it is not normal for a 14-15-year-old boy to touch his sisters, and I never said it was normal.

    I too find it surprising the Duggar parents agreed to go on a reality show, and I also found it shocking Josh made an incest joke.

  66. Elizabeth Lee wrote:

    You obviously didn’t read the police report. If you had, you would know that the stories included touching under clothing while the victim was awake…going to the father crying about what the perp had done…and the fact that the abuse continued for an entire year before the parents decided to do anything about it.

    There is some lying going on. I find it hard to believe anything from anyone who has spoken in public about this. For the record, it can take years, even decades, for some victims to admit to themselves and/or to others the extent of abuse they experienced.

  67. Bridget wrote:

    It is good to understand about the south and how they view words and the use of words. It would also be good for people in the south to understand what those words might mean or how they are perceived by people they are speaking to you.

    Very true. I try to change my word patterns a bit when I’m on the internet because I’ve come to realize that some word choices are not universal to American English. I’m much more likely to use “woman” or “women” in places where the appropriate word in my own culture is “lady” or “ladies” (and woman might be taken as an insult).

    I’m gonna’ keep using y’all, though. English needs a second person plural pronoun. 😉

  68. dee wrote:

    Abuser rarely tell the full truth.

    Victims in some families (like mine, and apparently the Duggars) are conditioned to accept blame for abuse.

    When you are raised that way, you sometimes do not even recognize when you are being abused or harassed.

    I remember after my mother’s death, my sister’s anger escalated. I confided in some online friends of mine about it because I was at a loss as what to do.

    They said based on everything I told them, that my sister was emotionally abusing me. I was in denial at that point. I brushed it off and told them, “Nah, it couldn’t be abuse, she is just grouchy.”

    However, after having read many blogs and books by psychologists the last few years, I’ve come to see now what my online friends were telling me years ago: yes, my sister has been verbally or emotionally abusing me all these years.

    I had to not only have my eyes opened to that, but I had to accept it was true (which was hard) and go through a mourning process. I had to grieve that my sister never loved me the way I wanted her to.

    Confronting stuff like this and dealing with it is very painful. I don’t think the Duggar girls are at that stage yet, and may never be, if they go to their graves living in denial.

    It can be very painful to confront the truth and easier to file it away in the back of your mind, leaving things unexamined.

    And you can be abused or exploited but not even realize it sometimes.

    Not only was I conditioned to be blinded to being abused, but if I did happen to notice it, I was taught I was at fault in some way.

    I must have done or said something to “deserve” the other person’s mistreatment, or, if only I had been nicer, the person would not have abused me, so it was my fault.

    That is another aspect of growing up in a Duggar-ish type of family.

  69. Nancy raises the question of what happens to victims where the offenses do not become known to the authorities. There have to be a significant numbers of them since there is a huge discrepancy between self-reported instances of victimization and official crime statistics.

    Are they all still in need of help and healing? Some are and some aren’t. I think it depends on whether children are able to tell their parents and their parents respond appropriately.

    I can give you two examples of children who did not make it into the crime stats. The two children of close friends were inappropriately touched by a young female babysitter. The children told their parents that very night. The parents responded that no one had the right to be touching them in their private areas and they would make sure that the babysitter ceased babysitting and got help for her problem. The children seemed satisfied and talked about how immature the girl was for playing doctor at that age. (Of course that wasn’t what was really going on but that is how they processed it). My friends observed no behavior or mood changes. It helped that the children did not see the girl on their own street and she attended a different school. My friends were prepared to get therapy for the kids but it did not seem necessary. They waited to see how the girl’s family responded before reporting the offenses.

    The babysitter’s mother was shocked and upset and put her daughter under psychiatric care. It appears she was acting out her own abuse at the hands of her father. He was prosecuted. My friends did not report the girl because she was a victim and getting help. That was twenty years ago and all three of the children are stable adults today.

    I also have a friend who was molested by her father. She never got any therapy, her father’s behavior was dismissed by the fact that he had a terminal illness (ie, “it was probably his medication”) and her mother took no responsibility for her lack of curiosity as to why her husband was in their daughter’s room after bedtime with the door shut. My friend is very religious and her religious advisors have urged her to forgive and forget and quoted Bible verses about honoring one’s parents. I have seen how the molestation has negatively affected her for decades but I cannot get her into therapy. She thinks she is fine since she forgave her parents (both deceased now) and she isn’t.

    My point is that I agree with Dr. Ablow. Sex offenses are serious. Josh kept on with the behavior, there was no professional evaluation and no ongoing treatment. Is he a pedophile? We don’t know and neither do the Duggars because their response was inadequate. In my first example, the babysitter is not a pedophile but we only know that because of the assessment of her therapist. And she is not a damaged adult because she got timely therapy.

    And we don’t know if the young Duggar women are genuinely okay or whether they are negatively affected in ways they don’t understand like my friend.

  70. Nancy wrote:

    How to talk in the south is not mostly about pronunciation but is rather a complex use of terms and tone of voice and body language and timing just as much as it is how long to hold a vowel sound and when to do it and a huge sensitivity as to when to say which to whom within the culture. This varies significantly from region to region. Sometimes southerners use southernisms in order to poke at some non-southerner without the other person knowing they have been poked or just how they have been poked, but ‘girls’ is not in that category.

    Fascinating stuff Nancy, it really is. Drastically different and yet not so different from where I’m originally from. My part of the country had a great influx of Eastern European humanity in the old long ago. Poles, Czechs, Serbians, Russians, and Jews all wove quite the fabric on the immigrant loom that was once South Eastern Wisconsin. The word ‘was’ is really inaccurate here because it’s happening again in my old homelands with a new infusion of people from Mexico ,Central America, India, and the Middle East.

  71. Daisy wrote:

    I had to not only have my eyes opened to that, but I had to accept it was true (which was hard) and go through a mourning process. I had to grieve that my sister never loved me the way I wanted her to.

    My husband was emotionally abusive. I was in denial for nearly 25 years. It may take a very long time for the Duggar daughters to break free and see just how badly they were abused by their parents and brother.

  72. Sharon wrote:

    I totally agree with Dee that it is not normal for a 14-15-year-old boy to touch his sisters, and I never said it was normal.

    Not normal in a normal setting maybe? I’m wondering if it happens more often than we think in situations where children are isolated in an environment with mostly family. The religious and family restrictions along with naivety do not supress a person’s sexual awakening. I wonder how much any of the children were taught about appropriate and not appropriate physical interaction BEFORE this happened. At the same time, Josh knew it was wrong by the sheer fact he was sneaking around to do it.

  73. Bridget wrote:

    It is good to understand about the south and how they view words and the use of words.

    I have some ideas and theories along that line. Remember that the south was a defeated group of people some century and a half ago. The south lost everything that could be lost, but I am thinking they also hung onto everything that could be hung onto–like language/communication patterns. We see groups who consider themselves non-mainstream doing that today-developing patterns of speech that serve as identifiers and also with which they can communicate with each other without ‘the man’ knowing what is going on. I think this may be or may have been one factor at work.

    I also think that the more ‘others’ object the more the actual words and the regional patterns (not the pronunciations) will persist, as in ‘don’t think you are going to take that away from me.’ The linguists talk about sounds sliding and moving forward in the mouth and such and some southern pronunciations in the process of disappearing. Sure. But that is not the core of the issue. So I asked young daughter (raised here and teaches english for special ed kids at a high school many of whom have poor ESL) and the same young daughter who has an amazing knack for things like this. So I asked her, what is the word I am looking for to explain what is so different about how people talk in the south? What am I missing here? Young daughter says, ‘Southerners are story tellers, and every linquistic unit has the potential for a story.’

    Well, I think that is it. The long discussions of nothing in particular, the digressions and rabbit trails, the thing about talking and talking about something long before they ever tell you what the actual topic is-all of that forms a framework around which stories can be interwoven. Stories in this sense does not mean something that fits a description in a text book, it more means talking in multiple colors rather than black and white. But you have to know something about the culture in order to understand what is being said with this story-speak methodology. Or else you miss part of it. And in that, the need to understand the culture and pick up on the clues it seems to me to serve somewhat a similar purpose as black speech or gang speech or christianese or the nuances that some of the UK people on here use with each other sometimes.

    I am not good at it. I recognize it when I see it, but I do not do it well and usually not at all. I had much rather say something and be done with it. And a gazillion times I have heard ‘you are not from around here are you?’ I have been called ‘plain spoken’ for using too few words (among other things) and for thinking that paragraphs need a topic sentence and such. That has nothing to with y’all and bless your heart. It is a way of interacting with people verbally.

  74. dee wrote:

    I am going to disagree. I have been following Robert Jeffress for a long while now. We have written about him on the blog. He comes across as both controlling and arrogant.

    Jeffress was given his own weekly show by Christian network TBN. It airs Sundays, around 11 a.m. or 12 noon. I think his show has only been on for a few months.

    I am glad that the bald doctor guy told Jeffress that he is a conservative, when Jeffress was mistaking him for a liberal.

    I’m a conservative, and many other conservatives will tend to assume you must be an atheistic, Democratic, liberal if you ever criticize people who are on “your side” of any discussion, whether it’s abuse stories like this, or a political topic.

  75. Nancy wrote:

    I am not good at it. I recognize it when I see it, but I do not do it well and usually not at all. I had much rather say something and be done with it.

    You and I might communicate well. Or, sit and enjoy a sunset without more than a few words passing in 15 minutes.

  76. Bridget wrote:

    I have no problem with ladies and gentlemen combined. Having worked in office environments, the term girls when referring to women in the work place is derogatory(.)

    The flip side:
    I read in an advice column a few weeks ago a letter by a woman in an office who said she worked with all men, except for one other woman.

    The men in the office would always put “Gentlemen:” in the subject heading or the greeting of the office e-mails, which bothered her, because it felt to her as though she and the other lady worker were being excluded.

  77. Anyway, back on the curve and no tangent line. The thing I noticed most in the video was the lack of any sort of dialogue. There was a lot of yelling past each other. Each side lobbed their own mortar rounds in an attempt to silence the opposition. Jeffress might have come unglued and opened up with a machine gun, but Ablow just called in an Apache gunship so to speak, knowing full well that he had the advantage of public opinion on his side.

  78. @ Nancy:

    I think there is an element of this ‘story’ dynamic, or ‘taking the long way around’, in most rural cultures. I live in rural NH, and I see this all the time. E.g., the farm hand from the farm down the road will come up to talk to me about arranging a delivery of hay, and by the time we’re done, we’ve been leaning against the barn talking for an hour about this that and the other thing. And arranging a delivery of hay.

    I really like this way of communicating. I have a buddy who moved up here from Alabama. He was shocked at how mellow and friendly and unhurried things were in this corner of Yankee-land. Ditto with my friend from TX. Stereotypes cut every which way.

    BTW, this farm hand I’m referring to is never in a hurry, but gets more done every day than any other two people I know… he just cruises and enjoys his work, and doesn’t worry about the clock.

  79. Marsha wrote:

    My friend is very religious and her religious advisors have urged her to forgive and forget and quoted Bible verses about honoring one’s parents. I have seen how the molestation has negatively affected her for decades but I cannot get her into therapy. She thinks she is fine since she forgave her parents (both deceased now) and she isn’t.

    Just having a supportive friend such as you to call it as it was (it was abuse), tell her that what happened to her was wrong, she didn’t deserve it, and her church and mother failed her on the abuse, can be very helpful to her.

    I think a lot of people who were abused one way or another can start on the road to healing if they are just listened to and believed, if someone else validates what happened to them.

  80. dee wrote:

    Sharon wrote:

    A teenager of 14 touching a younger girl is a very different thing than a man of 27 touching a young girl

    I disagree. How many teen boys who are 14-15 (he was 15 as it continued) do you know that touch their sisters? I raised a teen boy and knew his friends and I can assure that it is not normal. It is very worrisome and Dr Ablow said so as well.

    It is normal for 5 year older to do this, not teens. This guy went for his sisters. Thank heavens he went for the girls. If he had done it with boys they would have crucified him already. But, sisters- not so much.

    I’m with Dee on this. In my opinion, the alleged multiple offenses and the ways they were mishandled must be seen as very serious. I believe they were not taken seriously enough then, and still seem not to be enough now, in multiple dimensions:

    * Morally. In this situation it is not only sexual misconduct/assault, but involves incestuous contact.

    * Ethically. If you are going to say that a 15-year-old boy sexually touching a younger girl is not morally the equivalent of a 27-year-old man touching her, then ethically, are they equivalent if the 15-year-old boy touches her two different times? Three?

    There is this incredibly weird thing going on about abuse in Christian communities these days, in terms of ethical justification issues. We want to make a big deal of supposed “sin differential expansion” in a case like this. So we hear things like, “It isn’t really as bad if the perpetrator is just a teen. It’s way worse if the perpetrator is older.” But if it’s a case of a church elder sinning, then we want to do “sin differential reduction” and the leader is suddenly now a peer to all the laypeople. So we hear things like, “Everybody sins. Are you free from sin? He’s confessed it, that’s enough. He doesn’t have to do extra because he’s an elder.”

    * Spiritually. The apparent repeated activity may indicate lack of developing empathy and/or conscience, both of which have exceptionally serious ramifications in the long run.

    * Ministerially. Ministry responses should differ according to the need involved. This particular case involves serious personal issues on the part of the self-admitted offender. Early on, his actions could be seen as needing an “interception” because he is “at risk” of developing patterns as a perpetrator. The more times he carried out the behaviors, the farther along on the scale it goes until “interception” becomes “intervention” because malignant patterns are in place. I believe there are legitimate questions about the validity of “treatment” provided here.

    * Legally. Someone with legal background could confirm or correct the following, but my understanding has been that a charge of statutory rape can generally apply to a minor as the perpetrator, if the age difference is a certain number of years (two years, if I remember right, such as a 15-year-old engaging in intercourse with a 13-year-old). I don’t know if similar age-range differentials apply in other forms of sexual assault, but I believe that would be a relevant piece of legal information.

    Also, I don’t think anyone’s yet referred to the specific legal statutes of Arkansas that would have applied at the time Josh Duggar engaged in the self-confessed and reported multiple offenses.

    In spite of varying opinions about the relative degree of moral wrongness based on Josh Duggar’s age at the time he acted out his sexual explorations on five victims, and their ages in relation to his, civil laws applied then as now. They need to be kept in mind.

    For basic reference information on sexual offense crimes from 2003 [Title 5, Chapter 14].

    http://www.cga.ct.gov/2003/olrdata/jud/rpt/2003-r-0376.htm

    Compilation of relevant sections from Arkansas legal code — undated, but appears to be relatively current, and therefore helpful for having key information available all in one file:

    http://acasa.us/pdfs/Sexual-assault-laws.pdf

    Current information. This website appears to keep up to date with legal issues, plus has state-by-state references to relevant issues for survivors:

    http://www.womenslaw.org/statutes_detail.php?statute_id=5881

    Mandatory reporter laws for Arkansas (I wasn’t able to find 2003-era statutes; this is from 2010. [Title 12, chapter 18.]

    http://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/2010/title-12/subtitle-2/chapter-18/subchapter-4/12-18-402

  81. @ Daisy:

    Thanks, Daisy! I do try to be supportive.

    I read your post about how you were always asked what you did to make someone treat you that way when you were treated badly. My friend’s mother would ask her the same question. I remember my friend complaining about an obnoxious coworker who couldn’t get along with anyone. Her mother asked her what SHE had done to HIM and advised her that with a cheery smile and kindness, you can get along with everyone. I wish! I used to wonder what world she lived in; she just could not see ‘unpleasantness’ even when it was right in front of her.

  82. @ roebuck:

    My family moved every 2 to 3 years when I was growing up and a bit into my 20s, but we spent much of the time in the south. My parents come from the southern or mid-america area.

    I guess it seems romantic to hear how southerners talk, but I’ve had to unlearn it. It’s very cumbersome and tiresome and can lead to you putting up with a lot of garbage.

    I now am more upfront and blunt with people, and I straight up tell them if they have ticked me off or offended me. I don’t have the patience anymore to dance around the point.

    Girls and women in the south are especially encouraged to beat around the bush. They are taught to be nice to your face but talk catty about you once you are out of ear shot. This is also how I was raised.

    My dad, oddly enough, never bought into any of this, or maybe the men aren’t socialized to be this way as much as the women are.

    My dad has always been blunt to a fault. He does not sugar coat anything.

    My sister made a choice years ago to be blunt, but she also has a temper problem, so she will just come right out and say anything to you, she doesn’t care how it sounds or if it hurts you.

  83. Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:

    Christians(TM) are just as screwed-up sexually as everyone else these days, just in a different (and usually opposite) direction.

    Good point HUG. Human sexuality like everything else has its polar extremes. Whether it’s Duggarism in the Christian realm or Fifty Shades of Grey in the secular arena, I think the vast center can arrive at something that doesn’t go overboard in either direction. For Christians that may be easier said than done because it would require a re-examination of cherished notions and dogmas that could prove to be highly resistant a pragmatic review.

  84. Marsha wrote:

    Her mother asked her what SHE had done to HIM and advised her that with a cheery smile and kindness, you can get along with everyone. I wish! I used to wonder what world she lived in; she just could not see ‘unpleasantness’ even when it was right in front of her.

    That sounds similar to my mother.

    To be fair to my mother, she wasn’t always naive, or in denial, or in victim-blaming mode.

    However, on other occasions, when I told my mother I was being bullied as a kid by another kid, or I was an adult being harassed at a job by an adult boss, she would not blame me per se, but would put the burden on me to “correct” the bullying, by being really empathetic to the bully and making amends.

    So, for instance, if I told her I was being bullied daily by a teen when I was a teen on the bus every day for two weeks, she would ask me to minimize it by saying things like,

    “Maybe this boy comes from a really horrible family. Maybe his parents abuse him or ignore him, and he’s hurting.
    “If you just think in terms like that, it shouldn’t bother you when you get on the bus tomorrow and he bullies you again. Or bake him cookies today, and give him the cookies tomorrow.”

    Or, my mom might say, “Maybe the lady at your job is harassing you because she’s stressed. Maybe her husband just left her, and her doctor just diagnosed her with cancer.”

    My mother would concoct all these possible scenarios to excuse the bullies who were bullying me.

    I’ve since read that these same things happen in other families where the parents raise the kids (especially daughters) to be codependent, to make excuses for abusers, rather than seek justice.

    I was never told to stand up for myself. I was told to put up with bullying or abuse quietly and make excuses for the bully.

    I bet you anything the Duggar girls have been fed this same thinking too.

  85. A few thoughts and questions:

    1. How come so many people out there are not taking the environment these girls were raised in into consideration? I agree with Mae above that females in that world are objectified. Their virginity is like a currency in that world. That feeds into the how this was handled and how it is viewed. Those girls have been put on exhibition and come from an environment that teaches them to think in certain ways about themselves and their family. And a lot of money is at stake for their parents right now, too.

    If they are fine, that is great but that has little do with whether Josh is fine or not.

    2. Since when is it something to be considered “in the past” OR “not that big of a deal” when a brother sneaks into his sisters rooms to touch them while sleeping? (Not sure I buy into their sleeping and only being touched with bed clothes on or the way the scenerio was presented…because anything more might make them unmarriagable in their world)

    I get heart palpitations just thinking of that happening in my house growing up. There was total respect for privacy of the person and the room. My brother was caught trying to read my diary one time and he was punished big time for even being in my room. This is basic respect for others 101. Respect for the females? Is that missing in their world? I say yes based on what I know about that movement.

    3. Since when does the victim forgiving the perp have anything to with whether or not the perp has changed? That one is getting real old. So what if the victims have “moved on”? That makes no difference whatsoever to whether Josh Dugger should be trusted or not.

  86. Sharon wrote:

    My understanding of the expert at the end of the Kelly interview was that when it is a case of a young teen, such as Josh Duggar, basically being curious about girls, they can change their behavior as they mature. A teenager of 14 touching a younger girl is a very different thing than a man of 27 touching a young girl. It is the grown men who are attracted to children who continue to reoffend.

    Serious caution here. That is NOT normal. It shocks me so many think it is. As if the boy should consider his needing to experiment on girls his right. It starts there.

    Unless, of course, you are raising animals. Then it is to be expected.

    Makes you wonder how many “Christians” out there are raising animals instead of boys.

  87. @ dee:

    Ablow, who I am not familiar with, came off to me as the one with basic common sense concerning this issue.

    Jeffries? He comes off unreasonable, angry and a ticking time bomb.

  88. @ Daisy:

    Thanks will check it out. If you remember, SGM tried to blow off similar behavior as “normal” for boys.

    But again, they are referring to animals. Not humans, right?

  89. @ Nancy:

    Nancy, Not sure if you came across this or not but in the 1980’s it was not unusual for young Southern Career women to take classes to eradicate their accents. I attended one. We were convinced it would hurt our careers. Now, it is somewhat vogue to have an accent.

  90. Lydia wrote:

    2. Since when

    Since when the females involved need it to be in the past and not that big a deal for their own good as perceived by them, and for the reasons you have suggested in the rest of that paragraph. I can’t see that any good would come to them by taking that away from them-that level of public dismissal of it all by them.

    I can see severe criticism of the parents, and wariness about the future behavior of Josh, but somebody needs to take the ladies off center stage if that is what they themselves want.

  91. @ Nancy:

    And they chose to be interviewed about it on TV. Or did they have a choice? Or is that just what their family does?

    But I do heartily agree that the focus should be on the parents and Josh and wish it had been all along. But what do people do? They tune into the victims and how they feel about it all now and take that as their cue on how to respond to the perp. I don’t get it. In many ways, it has been positioned as the girls having say on whether Josh is ok now or not. How did it come to that?

  92. Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:

    Mae wrote:

    From my perspective, I think the show focuses on sex. I think the older girls have been exploited for their virginity, put on parade as objects of desire

    Christians(TM) are just as screwed-up sexually as everyone else these days, just in a different (and usually opposite) direction.

    Yes as in by denying normal emotions, everything gets turned into ” potential” sexual situations. No swimming, no hand holding, locked doors, Nike cues, and babies being made by the dozens….Everything comes down to the potential for sex.

    I grew up in a conservative household but if my older brother had crawled into my sister and my bedroom, to fondle us, bloody hell would have broken out.

  93. Daisy wrote:

    Girls and women in the south are especially encouraged to beat around the bush. They are taught to be nice to your face but talk catty about you once you are out of ear shot. This is also how I was raised.
    My dad, oddly enough, never bought into any of this, or maybe the men aren’t socialized to be this way as much as the women are.

    I know this may all seem tangential, but I think it’s important to discuss since it’s a factor in the Duggar family culture.

    My dad was like yours, Daisy. Interestingly, my mother did all the sweet-talking in front of people, but she was not particularly catty behind people’s backs. Even though I’ve lived in the south my entire life, I’ve never really understood some of the social stuff. I thought it was because I was odd, but I’m beginning to think that my parents taught me different (better) values about gossip. I tend to get along with people who are not Southern better than many Southerners.

    I’m sure the Southern tradition of putting on a happy face in public is a factor in how the Duggar family handled Josh’s molestation of his younger sisters.

  94. Mae wrote:

    I grew up in a conservative household but if my older brother had crawled into my sister and my bedroom, to fondle us, bloody hell would have broken out.

    Yes. The thing that stops me dead is why did the parents not go ballistic the first time it happened? I can think of several possible reasons why, but not one is a good reason. I raised a boy child, and this is not acceptable behavior under any excuse in the book. Adolescent boys are, well, boys but they are not wild animals-unless somebody lets them be or unless they need professional help, or both.

    But I do think that the whole mystique of the Duggar family seems to be sex saturated. Tell me if you think I am wrong about this, but for people to say they want a big family, I am good with that if they can do it responsibly. I don’t think that needs to be considered a bad thing. But this other idea that they are just going to accept whatever happens and if ‘the lord’ sends us one kid right after the other well what can we do because after all it is ‘the lord’ and that is how he is–that seems to make God just one more fertility god. And then to raise the children in some extreme idea that sex and purity and fertility are apparently the most important thing that God intends/demands of people, especially females, that seems to border on blasphemy to me.

    I am not advocating the all too rampant sexual behavior of some segments of our culture, but I am concerned about presenting God as someone for whom it is all about sex. Refraining from sexual immorality is not the same as worshipping fertility/purity as the maximum achievement of life.

  95. Daisy wrote:

    Girls and women in the south are especially encouraged to beat around the bush. They are taught to be nice to your face but talk catty about you once you are out of ear shot. This is also how I was raised.

    I have read about similar phenomena in many honor/shame cultures, where “dishonor” is usually avenged in blood. For your own survival when any word can give blood-feud offense, you learn to do everything indirectly, by inference and suggestion instead of direct statements. (I think of the indirection and euphemism of formal Arabic or Japanese, both of whose cultures historically included honor/blood feuds.)

    And in historical fiction, the Southern Gentlemen’s propensity for regaining honor by Dueling is a common trope, so I wonder if the same dynamic is at work in the Former Confederate States?

  96. A lot of people made points here that I have thought myself. First, when I was arguing with my roommate, who said the Duggars were being persecuted, I told her that they chose to be on T.V. in the public eye. When you make that choice, everything is public. Also, I agree that it’s normal to experiment with other kids (when done consensually), but NOT with your sisters and not without consent.

    and @Daisy – I agree that children brought up in this environment don’t know how to become their own person. Some type of rebellion is a very important developmental step. I basically moved from my parents house (which wasn’t oppressive, but I didn’t learn how to grow up much) and went to Covenant Life, which was then a very structured system with households and a strong leadership in the care groups. When I left there, it was quite a shock, but I have grown up and rebelled quite a bit. I felt like I didn’t know how to do a lot of things – and probably still don’t. You do lose some abilities and therefore are fearful of doing certain things.

  97. @ Nancy:

    More then once I have muttered to myself, this Duggar crew and company, has the earmarks of a fertility cult….a sanitized, christianised version.
    I am stunned so many ,”Christian”, people see the Duggars as role models.

  98. Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:

    And in historical fiction, the Southern Gentlemen’s propensity for regaining honor by Dueling is a common trope, so I wonder if the same dynamic is at work in the Former Confederate States?

    That may be a bit too far, but I will tell you this. Those men in the south for whom the ‘southern gentleman’ idea might be a fit, do not treat women very well. A couple of movies I might note here : Steel Magnolias and one whose exact name I have forgotten but it was about students at The Citadel (maybe it was VMI but I think it was the citadel) Maybe it was called An Officer and a Gentleman?

  99. @ Mae:

    All you have to do is give it a ‘Biblical’ coat of paint, proclaim with passionate sincerity that this is what the Bible ‘teaches’, and that this is what pleases the Almighty, and you’re in like Flynn. And yeah I agree, let’s call the walking, quacking duck what it is. A fertility cult. The points in which the present day Duggar one differs from the ancient Pagan ones are only incidental.

  100. @ Elizabeth Lee:

    In defense of my mother, she was basically a nice person in private too, but, if she said anything critical at all, it was never to the person’s face, it was always after they left.

    Not that she said anything super mean and hateful, but if if was negative, she’s make sure the person was out of ear shot.

    I was raised to be that way too, never to confront people, don’t be direct, only complain behind their backs if they ticked me off.

    I think there is also a southern cultural thing of it considered being shameful to air your dirty family laundry (or other personal problems) in public or to anyone.

    I never bought into that, but the rest of my family did and does.

    My mother was the only person I could confide in, ever since she’s died, and I’ve tried talking to other family for support, they act like it’s shameful or wrong, and tell me to pipe down and go get a hobby.

  101. Mae wrote:

    has the earmarks of a fertility cult….a sanitized, christianised version.

    I had mentioned on a much older thread on some other topic here over a year ago that a book I read by Christian authors on singleness discussed this, or something like it.

    They read books about marriage, singleness, dating, etc, by other Christians and quoted from those books in their book. What they found over and over is that a lot of Christian writers equate having married sex to knowing God.

    The authors said some of these contemporary Christian views are similar to ancient pagan ones, where if you wanted to connect to a deity, you had to use temple prostitutes. Sex was considered a gateway (or something) to knowing deity.

    Of course a big problem for this view is if you say having married sex is necessary to knowing God or reflecting God, you are marginalizing celibate singles.

    It’s also unbiblical. Paul wrote it’s better to stay single and not touch a woman. Paul never said didley about having to be married or have married sex to learn about God, know God, or to reflect God.

    But the authors said some of this stuff is very much like ancient pagan religious ideas about God and sex.

  102. Nancy wrote:

    Yes. The thing that stops me dead is why did the parents not go ballistic the first time it happened?

    There is a report from a camera man that one of the boys told Jim Bob that his brother (neither was Josh) had been in the bathroom for a long time. Jim Bob went in, found the boy masturbating and went ballistic. The boy had to do chores with his hands tied for the rest of the day.

    Did they think this was worse?

  103. @ Sharon:

    Sharon, because I had read the police report right after it was online, I carefully listened to the parents to see if they admitted to the incidents of victims’ reporting to JimBob themselves after the first ones of Josh ratting on himself. I believe that JimBob glossed very quickly past the incidents that a victim ran to him and the quickly passed that not all the victims were family members. The report is detailed, too. JimBob did quickly admit in the interview to not seeking help till the third incident. So I was surprised to hear the two adult daughters say otherwise. I felt like both interviews were designed to sway everyone who has not read the police report, so don’t feel too bad. And I know what you mean about feeling like violating victims by reading police reports. But until I do, I can’t come up with my opinions, except to judge everything that is already public, like their belief systems. Which, speaking through experience (not the incest part though), definitely contributes to this mess. I believe the adult daughters should have kept the other victims out of their conversation. They did a pretty good job sticking to their own story but not good enough. I like Megyn Kelly and I like that she cares for the victims, but I differ from her on what consequences should or shouldn’t be. I am pro-life. How can I expect pro-choice people to respect my opinion that a girl should give birth to her rapist’s child when I don’t even think that molesters and their victims should be known if it helps prevent more lives from being hurt.
    I just had a thought. Maybe the adult daughters have not read the report.

  104. Nancy wrote:

    But this other idea that they are just going to accept whatever happens and if ‘the lord’ sends us one kid right after the other well what can we do because after all it is ‘the lord’ and that is how he is–that seems to make God just one more fertility god. And then to raise the children in some extreme idea that sex and purity and fertility are apparently the most important thing that God intends/demands of people, especially females, that seems to border on blasphemy to me.

    I first encountered this way of thinking in Gothardism about 40 years ago. Birth control was considered a lack of faith in God who “opens and closes the womb.” Aside from the misuse of the Bible, this is a misuse of common sense and common grace.

    I once had a discussion with a young cub who was into this, and I asked him if he was willing to sacrifice his wife’s health or life so that she could have as many babies as “the Lord gives them.” He said they would have to trust the Lord. I said, “OK, then don’t you ever go see a doctor again, and don’t take any medicine. Just trust the Lord and leave it in his hands. If you cut your hand off with the band saw, just trust the Lord with it. Because Jesus healed the soldier’s ear.”

    Not surprisingly, this young cub thought that is different.” At which point one realizes that one cannot reason with irrational people who are thoroughly indoctrinated. It is indeed a cult. In the Duggar case, I think having babies is the family business that they have successfully marketed, and I will continue to think that until convincing evidence surfaces to the contrary.

  105. Something that I wonder about is the use of terms “police report” vs “juvenile record”. People who defend Duggar say his juvenile record should have been sealed. Even Megyn Kelley said his juvenile record had been illegally released. Does Josh Duggar actually have a juvie record? I always thought that meant there had been an arrest and a legal process had been followed. But that didn’t happen. Seems a big part of the problem people mix up the terms and/or don’t understand the laws regarding what can be legally released and what can not. Also I’m a first time poster. I don’t agree with everybody and everything but I appreciate reading your website and the comments.

  106. @ Gram3:
    My dad used to get caught up in a lot of that thinking. If it wasn’t for my fairly strong mother, I don’t know where I would have ended up. The closest they got to divorce was when my dad talked about going to live in a Christian commune. After my mom’s fifth kid the doctor said her body couldn’t handle any more and she had super large cysts on her ovaries. My dad was so against the hysterectomy. When I was 36 I had everything removed from myself to end my suffering from severe endometriosis and adenomyosis. When my my dad started in on his rant, I yelled back “my uterus was off offending me, so I plucked it out!”

  107. I can’t say that I think the Duggars shouldn’t have had all their kids. They just shouldn’t make it God’s law.

  108. My 30 year old daughter is still deciding not to have children. She never liked kids when she was a kid. Why should she when others want lots of them. Why can’t it be God’s will for my daughter to be a career woman without children. My other daughter wants to be a stay-at-home mom.

  109. David wrote:

    Daisy brings up a point I’ve noticed for years:

    A lot of kids go through their rebellious phase in their teens. Some get to it in their college years.

    There seems to be a growing number of people on the fundamentalist side of evangelicalism who are going through it in their late 20s or 30s. I can name quite a few people in my life where it took them until their late 20s to really start realizing that the fundamentalist structure they were fed isn’t just a little flawed: it was filled with naivety at best, lies at worst.

    From personal experience, it’s from not being taught how to think critically and growing up in a bubble. It stunts intellectual, emotional, and spiritual maturity. You don’t get the same catalysts for change in your life that most teenagers get until you’re much older sometimes – it’s no surprise sometimes that realizing authority figures were wrong gets handled like an immature teenager at age 40.

    “Purity” is seen as more desirable than the process to get to purity: growth.

  110. elisabeth ann seton wrote:

    Having been a Catholic for many years, our church requires anyone having any or any potential contact with children at church to: a) undergo a criminal background check and b) complete VIRTUS our child safety program. The information from VIRTUS was that pedophiles don’t change. They can NOT be rehabilitated.

    My United Methodist Church has a similar policy. I wish more would follow suit.

  111. Mae wrote:

    Dig deep into the Duggars following the teachings of Gotthard and their close association with Vision Forum and you will find very ugly, dark underpinning .

    Yes, indeed.

  112. Daisy wrote:

    Marsha wrote:
    Her mother asked her what SHE had done to HIM and advised her that with a cheery smile and kindness, you can get along with everyone. I wish! I used to wonder what world she lived in; she just could not see ‘unpleasantness’ even when it was right in front of her.
    That sounds similar to my mother.
    To be fair to my mother, she wasn’t always naive, or in denial, or in victim-blaming mode.
    However, on other occasions, when I told my mother I was being bullied as a kid by another kid, or I was an adult being harassed at a job by an adult boss, she would not blame me per se, but would put the burden on me to “correct” the bullying, by being really empathetic to the bully and making amends.
    So, for instance, if I told her I was being bullied daily by a teen when I was a teen on the bus every day for two weeks, she would ask me to minimize it by saying things like,
    “Maybe this boy comes from a really horrible family. Maybe his parents abuse him or ignore him, and he’s hurting.
    “If you just think in terms like that, it shouldn’t bother you when you get on the bus tomorrow and he bullies you again. Or bake him cookies today, and give him the cookies tomorrow.”
    Or, my mom might say, “Maybe the lady at your job is harassing you because she’s stressed. Maybe her husband just left her, and her doctor just diagnosed her with cancer.”
    My mother would concoct all these possible scenarios to excuse the bullies who were bullying me.
    I’ve since read that these same things happen in other families where the parents raise the kids (especially daughters) to be codependent, to make excuses for abusers, rather than seek justice.
    I was never told to stand up for myself. I was told to put up with bullying or abuse quietly and make excuses for the bully.
    I bet you anything the Duggar girls have been fed this same thinking too.

    I don’t think I was ever told anything like this explicitly, but I was also the victim of school bullying, and I definitely got the impression that I had to put up with it, because if *I* fought back, *I* would be the one who got into trouble, while the bully would get off scot-free.

    Also, I do remembering getting the impression that I shouldn’t “make excuses” for my own behavior, but accept responsibility for my part in anything. On the surface, that’s true . . . but what happens if you have no idea what you did to “make” someone else treat you the way they did?

    Combine that with the teaching of “turning the other cheek” (which I interpreted as “not fighting back”) and you have a recipe for big trouble.

  113. Elizabeth Lee wrote:

    Sharon wrote:

    Jessa and Jill said they were asleep and didn’t even know. They said the others were briefly touched in such a way that they didn’t realize it was improper. Jessa and Jill said Josh knew he intended to be touching the girls in an improper way, but the girls didn’t realize.

    You obviously didn’t read the police report. If you had, you would know that the stories included touching under clothing while the victim was awake…going to the father crying about what the perp had done…and the fact that the abuse continued for an entire year before the parents decided to do anything about it.

    I agree with this.

  114. dee wrote:

    I think Dr Keith Ablow, laid it on the line. He believes that Josh has a serious problem that has been covered up by the family. I tend to agree with him.

    What really makes me raise my eyebrows is that parents made a decision to have a reality show based on their family. They stressed sexual purity by not even their kids to go to the beach because of bathing suits! Yet, they knew about this. No parent in their right mind would expose their kids to scrutiny knowing they had this in the background.

    They knew about this issue and yet they chose to open their lives to a media which would check them out. My question is, “Why?” I believe that there ism ore to this story than is being revealed/ Josh Duggar made a joke on TV about incest in Arkansas. knowing he had issues. Why is that? Is he trying to tell us something? This was after the infamous incident. The fact he could joke about it is worrisome.

    http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/25/josh-duggar-incest-joke-video-2008

    As of right now, I do not believe that we have the whole story. My guess is more has been covered up in that family and a number of lawyers, psychiatrists, etc seem to think so.

    As for the rates of juvenile sex offenders who go onto offend, the data is in its infancy. If you look at the study that discusses a 10% rate, those offender were only followed for “several years.”I would not hang my hat on those numbers. Also, the question comes up as to whether or not he received proper counseling. The Duggars claim he has but what does that word mean to them?

    These are the things that have been bothering me, too, Dee….I really don’t trust anything that either of the Duggar parents has to say. They have lied before; indeed, they have been living a lie…..

  115. Lydia wrote:

    Since when does the victim forgiving the perp have anything to with whether or not the perp has changed? That one is getting real old. So what if the victims have “moved on”? That makes no difference whatsoever to whether Josh Dugger should be trusted or not.

    Well said!! This is the heart of the whole situation.

  116. Patti wrote:

    When my my dad started in on his rant, I yelled back “my uterus was off offending me, so I plucked it out!”

    Love that! I laughed out loud. But, I’m so sorry your dad got caught up in that. Lots of well-meaning people did, and I imagine the washout is going to take a generation or two.

  117. Mae wrote:

    @ Nancy:

    More then once I have muttered to myself, this Duggar crew and company, has the earmarks of a fertility cult….a sanitized, christianised version.
    I am stunned so many ,”Christian”, people see the Duggars as role models.

    I read this, & realized that this is a big part of why the whole Duggar family & their show has always made me kinda queasy.
    Yet so many people fail to see it….

  118. Nancy wrote:

    But this other idea that they are just going to accept whatever happens and if ‘the lord’ sends us one kid right after the other well what can we do because after all it is ‘the lord’ and that is how he is–

    Well, if they’re going to go with how “the lord” does things, he designed a woman’s body to carry a baby for 9 months and then feed the child for quite awhile afterward. Full-time nursing tends to diminish fertility. My ex-husband and I didn’t use any form of birth control during the years we were having children and the natural (i.e. Lord’s!) spacing was that the children are 21 months to 3 years apart.

    Michelle Duggar deliberately quit breastfeeding each child after just a couple of months because she wanted to encourage the return of her fertility. This was not a case of caring for her babies and waiting to see what “the lord” would do. The Duggars were on a mission to have as many babies as possible.

    I would not be surprised to learn that one or both of the Duggar parents have serious psychological problems. There’s something wrong with people who want this much attention.

  119. Elizabeth Lee wrote:

    Michelle Duggar deliberately quit breastfeeding each child after just a couple of months because she wanted to encourage the return of her fertility. This was not a case of caring for her babies and waiting to see what “the lord” would do.

    Not that I don’t believe you, but is this a statement that Michelle Duggar made, and is it documented somewhere?

    My mother had eight children in 10 years. It was during a time when nursing was not encouraged and women were given medication to dry up their milk production. Children came every 12-15 months. My parents were Catholic and didn’t use any birth control those first ten years.

  120. I just have a simple question – How would Robert Jeffress have responded if it was released that Ozzy Osbourne (when the Osbournes had their reality show) had the same behavior in his teenage years that Josh Duggar had? Would Jeffress be spouting that it is none of our business? I think he would have been jumping on the bandwagon to cancel the show. 🙂

  121. @ Bridget:

    My mom could not breastfeed at all. Do I dare say she told me she was not one bit upset about it? Thankfully she lived in a time of fortified formula and did not have to hire a wet nurse. :o)

    About 20 years ago, it was all the rage in my circles to use Catholic Family Planning techniques out of Creighton U to GET pregnant.

  122. Daisy wrote:

    I was never told to stand up for myself. I was told to put up with bullying or abuse quietly and make excuses for the bully.

    oh. my. g.

    This is so familiar. I want to throw up. No wonder our teens are so bitter against their dad.

  123. @ refugee:
    …but he was bullied mercilessly in his youth, and I guess if it was good enough for him, it was good enough for his kids…

    Oh, kids, I’m so so sorry. I stuck up for you as much as I could but it should have been more.

  124. Sharon wrote:

    Further to my most recent comment: Again, this highlights the problem of using the term “pedophile” to refer to Josh. True pedophiles–grown men–do reoffend at a high rate. Josh was not a pedophile. He was a 14-yr-old touching girls a few years younger than himself. Jessa and Jill specifically objected to his being called a pedophile.

    Someone probably already answered this.

    In our state, you don’t have to be 15 to be considered a pedophile, or to be prosecuted for it and suffer the legal penalties (including being labeled a “sex offender” — perhaps for the rest of your life). All it takes is a certain gap in age between the offender and the victim. I think it might be something like three years or more.

    In Josh’s case, he molested someone nine or ten years younger than himself. In our state, he’d be labeled “sex offender” even at the tender age of 15. Oh, the record might be sealed when he turned adult, but the court system would have him on their radar, and at the hint of impropriety they’d haul the label back out, dust it off, and adhere it to him with superglue.

  125. @ Daisy:
    Daisy, I’m reading comments out of order, partly to avoid thinking too deeply at the moment. But I just wanted to respond to this to say, it’s not just a Southern thing, though it might be a cultural thing.

    My spouse is from a different culture, and he can’t stand to hear us criticize anyone we actually know in real life. It’s kind of odd, because he used to love to (sometimes still does) listen to talk radio, where the hosts’ occupation consists of bashing and trashing people.

  126. @ Daisy:
    Oh my. So that’s what they’re teaching christian men and boys in those men-only forums and discussion groups?

    I think our daughters may be better off marrying outside the “faith.”

  127. Bridget wrote:

    Elizabeth Lee wrote:
    Michelle Duggar deliberately quit breastfeeding each child after just a couple of months because she wanted to encourage the return of her fertility. This was not a case of caring for her babies and waiting to see what “the lord” would do.
    Not that I don’t believe you, but is this a statement that Michelle Duggar made, and is it documented somewhere?
    My mother had eight children in 10 years. It was during a time when nursing was not encouraged and women were given medication to dry up their milk production. Children came every 12-15 months. My parents were Catholic and didn’t use any birth control those first ten years.

    Gosh. I cannot remember where I read that. It may not be documented anywhere. I did some Googling and found a lot of info about her using “sleep training” which tends to reduce milk supply and encourage the return of fertility. I also saw one place that said she always weans at six months if she hadn’t already. However, most of what I read was from people commenting. There’s nothing on their official website.

  128. @ David:
    Homeschoolers Anonymous and Recovering Grace come to mind. I am so grateful for those sites. They provided the first reality check to me that it wasn’t just all in my head, but that the fruit of the christian homeschooling movement was not all it had been painted to look like.

  129. @ Elizabeth Lee:

    I did not make myself clear enough, so I apologize. Congrats on your family. Your reproductive choices are your own-but that is just the point.

    The difference is that I don’t remember seeing you on TV trying to tell people how perfect you were. For that matter, I don’t remember back in the pre-vatican II days hearing lay catholics trying to represent themselves to protestants as on the fast tract to sainthood based on their reproductive history. I don’t hear LawProf who comments here and has a large family claiming special religious preference because he has pleased god better than other people. The whole difference is attitude, not reproductive choice or family size, is what I am saying. And the Duggars do not make the grade in attitude in this area.

  130. This may sound stupid. If so, teach me. I really hope it does not sound unsympathetic towards victims. The two sisters in the interview say that they were re-victimized?

    If you feel re-victimized by people hearing of when you are an adult, would that mean something in you feels it was your mistake, or fear that someone in your world will blame you for it?

  131. Sorry, I should have worded it like this:
    This may sound stupid. If so, teach me. I really hope it does not sound unsympathetic towards victims. The two sisters in the interview say that they felt re-victimized by the report?

    If you feel re-victimized by people hearing of your abuse when you are an adult, would that mean something in you feels it was your mistake, or fear that someone in your world will blame you for it?

  132. Muff Potter wrote:
    Human sexuality like everything else has its polar extremes. Whether it’s Duggarism in the Christian realm or Fifty Shades of Grey in the secular arena, I think the vast center can arrive at something that doesn’t go overboard in either direction. For Christians that may be easier said than done because it would require a re-examination of cherished notions and dogmas that could prove to be highly resistant a pragmatic review.

    I don’t think these things are quite polar opposites, Muff. In both cases:

    1) The man/ men in the story are seen as dominant, the leaders.
    2) The fictional book had a virginal female character who seems to know nothing of her body, the Duggars basically sell female “purity” and the girls did not know the right words for their body parts when speaking to the police.
    3) Abusive behaviour from males is forgiven, and women expected to just love them past it. (Christian Grey stalks, threatens, hits Anastasia while she does not enjoy it, and when she half-heartedly breaks up with him after he gives her a micro-managing contract which she hates and doesn’t want to sign, he breaks into her home and rapes her. Readers still speak well of him. Josh Duggar molests his sisters and his parents do not treat the situation well, yet they still have defenders.)

    In short, both are examples of cultures that minimizes the abuse of women and exalts males who lord it over women.

    (And complementarians think they are counter-cultural? Think again, comps…)

  133. I want to know where are the articles and concern on the private school in Minnesota on their taking even an eleven year old in the group to an adult sex shop showing them sex toys while there is video porn nearby. Where is the outrage in that too? Not seeing anything on this.

  134. Bridget wrote:

    My mother had eight children in 10 years. It was during a time when nursing was not encouraged and women were given medication to dry up their milk production.

    Was that between 1945 and 1965 or so? Can’t vouch for the medication, but there was a common attitude at the time (especially in suburban areas) that (Scientific) Formula and bottle-feeding were superior to breast-feeding. (I was bottle-raised, but that was because my mother couldn’t produce much milk, no meds involved.) My stepmother (also a Depression kid) had some pretty extreme attitudes along those lines, even claiming that breast-feeding was “unnatural”.

  135. Casey wrote:

    I want to know where are the articles and concern on the private school in Minnesota on their taking even an eleven year old in the group to an adult sex shop showing them sex toys while there is video porn nearby. Where is the outrage in that too? Not seeing anything on this.

    This is the first I heard of it. Do you mean “not seeing anything” as in deliberate suppression/Conspiracy Theory?

    Otherwise, my response if that of Frank Zappa:
    “Stupidity is like hydrogen; it’s the basic building block of the Universe.”

  136. Daisy wrote:

    She had Christian men, including one “preacher,” tell her this behavior is common and normal for Christian men, other guys telling her that all teen boys want to molest girls, all Christian husbands have rapey fantasies, etc.

    I wonder if claiming such behavior is Wish Fulfillment for Preacher and his Patrios. Or just “I do, so Everybody Must.”

  137. Casey wrote:

    I want to know where are the articles and concern on the private school in Minnesota on their taking even an eleven year old in the group to an adult sex shop showing them sex toys while there is video porn nearby. Where is the outrage in that too? Not seeing anything on this.

    You didn’t see anything on this? Then how do you know it happened? There has been plenty of public outrage which anyone can see if they google the key words.

    What is the point of bringing this up on a blog about spiritual abuse? It was a private, non-religious school. I certainly hope you aren’t arguing that if a private school takes a group of eleven year olds on a trip to an upscale sex shop for an educational program, then it was perfectly fine for Josh Duggar to molest five girls and avoid prosecution and for his parents not to get him therapy.

    I have never spoken for this diverse group before and will never do so again but I am quite sure I can do so now. We all disapprove of a private school scheduling a field trip to a sex shop without parental permission. Each and every one of us. Happy now?

  138. Headless Unicorn Guy wrote:

    Was that between 1945 and 1965 or so? Can’t vouch for the medication, but there was a common attitude at the time (especially in suburban areas) that (Scientific) Formula and bottle-feeding were superior to breast-feeding.

    I breast fed both of my boys – 1966 & 1969 and hospital was delighted that I had decided on that. It was a catholic hospital so I don’t know if that made a difference or not. Wonderful experience imo.

  139. Retha wrote:

    Sorry, I should have worded it like this:
    This may sound stupid. If so, teach me. I really hope it does not sound unsympathetic towards victims. The two sisters in the interview say that they felt re-victimized by the report?

    If you feel re-victimized by people hearing of your abuse when you are an adult, would that mean something in you feels it was your mistake, or fear that someone in your world will blame you for it?

    The Duggar daughters are just repeating Mommy and Daddy’s stance: That it’s EVERYBODY ELSE’S FAULT. It’s the fault of the Springdale Police Chief (who had to obey the Freedom of Information Act and produce a redacted police report and it would be a crime for her not to), Arkansas Social Services’ fault and Mommy and Daddy had Josh sue Social Services when he was 19 years old. Where did he get the money for an attorney? An attorney? Mommy and Daddy had to be behind that.

    These ARROGANT parents have a lot of apologies to give out. And it is THEIR fault and nobody else’s.

    It is their fault that they lied to millions, put their family on tv, pretended everything was fine and they had all of the *answers* while hiding repetitive sexual abuse in their midst and multiple victims.

  140. Retha wrote:

    If you feel re-victimized by people hearing of your abuse when you are an adult, would that mean something in you feels it was your mistake, or fear that someone in your world will blame you for it

    Re-victimized by the media? Re-victimized by the report?

    These are two young women who have lived their day-to-day lives in front of cameras are now feeling victimized by the public attention? No one knew the names of the victims as the report did not disclose them…that is, until two of those victims chose to disclose who they were by apparently agreeing to a personal interview to the media.

    I found that strange.

  141. refugee wrote:

    Someone probably already answered this.

    In our state, you don’t have to be 15 to be considered a pedophile, or to be prosecuted for it and suffer the legal penalties (including being labeled a “sex offender” — perhaps for the rest of your life). All it takes is a certain gap in age between the offender and the victim. I think it might be something like three years or more.

    In Josh’s case, he molested someone nine or ten years younger than himself. In our state, he’d be labeled “sex offender” even at the tender age of 15. Oh, the record might be sealed when he turned adult, but the court system would have him on their radar, and at the hint of impropriety they’d haul the label back out, dust it off, and adhere it to him with superglue.

    Josh could have been arrested, prosecuted and convicted. However his parents made absolutely sure to report to the police long after the statute of limitations had expired for Josh to be charged.

  142. Latest MSNBC news headline on Duggargate:

    DUGGARS’ HOMETOWN TAKES OSTRICH APPROACH TO MOLESTATION SCANDAL

  143. Sexual predators can seem like the nicest persons imaginable. I am trying to explain Robert Jeffress’s behavior during this affair. I have been around a sexual predator — the kind with a mug shot on the Internet, and it was unbelievable. That kind of thing couldn’t be done by this nice person was my thought. I reacted like Robert Jeffress towards the evidence. Problem is is that it can happen, and that that charming person can be a predator. I understand that Ostrich approach described in URL above. I have been there and done that.