Josh Duggar confessed three times to sexually molesting his sisters and a family friend before his parents took any actions, according to a new police report released Wednesday, weeks after the allegations first came to light.
The family then announced their first televised interview since the scandal broke, set to air on Fox News Wednesday night. The report, first published by In Touch Weekly, which broke the story, shows Duggar first confessed in March 2002 to sneaking into his sisters’ shared room and touching them “on the breasts” and private “areas while they were sleeping” when he was 14 years old. This allegedly occurred four to five times.
“Apparently the girls had always been asleep when these incidents occurred,” the report reads. “[Dad Jim Bob] said that when they later told the girls what had occurred, one of the girls, [redacted], had said that she remembered one time when she woke up and [Josh, redacted] was ‘taking her blanket away,’ but she did not remember anything else.”
About four months later, Josh apparently admitted to fondling a family friend’s breasts while she was sleeping on the couch. Jim Bob Duggar told police they disciplined their oldest son after this, according to the report. It did not specify what that discipline consisted of.
But about nine months after that, Josh allegedly confessed to inappropriately touching his five-year-old sister as she was sitting on his lap while he was reading to her. Josh’s father Jim Bob apparently told police that around this time Josh also reached under one of his daughter’s dresses and touched her while standing in the laundry room, according to the police report.
The Duggars then met with their church’s elders and decided on a Christian program in Little Rock, Arkansas, to discipline Josh, according to the report. They apparently feared sending Josh to a different program, which they were told were “finishing schools” in which Josh “might be exposed to other offenders and other things that they did not want him exposed to … where juveniles learned how to offend from other offenders.”
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar said on Facebook that they would sit down with Megyn Kelly on Fox News “to share our hearts with you about the pain that we walked through as a family twelve years ago, the tears we all shed and the forgiveness that was given.”
A portion of the interview is set to air on “Kelly File” on Wednesday at 9 p.m. The full one-hour special will air on Friday.
Shortly after these allegations came to light last month, Josh Duggar reportedly resigned from his position with the Family Research Council. He apparently apologized to his sisters after he finished the program in 2003.
“I would do anything to go back to those teen years and take different actions,” he said in a statement last month. “In my life today, I am so very thankful for God’s grace, mercy and redemption.”
