Fox News really knew how to drag this one out. Earlier this week, they played an hour long interview with Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar regarding their son Josh Duggar‘s history of molesting underage girls. Last night, it was Jessa & Jill’s turn to speak out on their big brother’s behalf, especially considering they were two of his victims. Megyn Kelly didn’t really ask any hard-hitting questions, but that’s fine – the girls were more than willing to defend Josh’s honour and insist that he’s a changed man and that it’s this whole media rigamarole that’s been more of a “re-victimization” than when Josh molested them. Yikes.
Here’s what we learned from the interview.
- Jill and Jessa were 12 and “9 or 10” respectively when Josh molested them. They say they were both unaware of the abuse until their parents spoke with them (separately) to inform them of what happened.
- Josh was “sent away” from the house following the reveal of his abuse, which made the girls “sad” because “he’s our brother – we were kids”. However, when he came back, they found he was a changed man and agreed to grant him “forgiveness with boundaries”.
- While Josh did remain in the house, there were apparently “safeguards” put in place to keep the girls safe, including locks on their doors and not allowing Josh to babysit his younger siblings.
- In general, both Jill and Jessa seemed brainwashed into believing that we’re all taking sexual abuse too seriously. Jill called their abuse “very mild compared to what some go through” (?????), while Jessa explained it so much more eloquently (LOL): “I do want to speak up in his defense against people who are calling him a child molester or pedophile or rapist, as some people are saying. That’s so overboard and a lie, really. People will get mad at me for saying, but I can say this. I was one of the victims, you know? So I can speak out and set the record straight here… In Josh’s case, he as a boy — a young boy in puberty — and he was a little too curious about girls. And that got him in trouble. He made some bad choices, but the extent of it was mild inappropriate touching on clothed victims, most of which while girls were sleeping.” Sigh!
- Confronted with the irony that Josh is an outspoken critic of LGBT lifestyles, Jessa said this gem: “That’s right. It’s right to say, ‘Here’s what I believe, here’s my values,’ even if you’ve made stupid mistakes or had failures. Even if you’ve had failures in your past, it doesn’t mean you can’t be changed. The real issue is that people are making this sound like it was yesterday, but it happened 12 years ago when he was a child himself. So I think seeing the change in his life — we witnessed it, we know.” Yikes.
You can watch the complete interview below, but I warn you, your brain will probably melt inside your skull.
Wow! I didn’t know that they made that much Kool-Aid!!!!