UNITED STATES
Talking Points Memo
By CATHERINE THOMPSON
Published JUNE 3, 2015
A 5-year-old was among the young girls Josh Duggar, the eldest son of the family made famous by TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting,” allegedly molested when he was a teenager, according to a sheriff’s report published Wednesday by tabloid magazine In Touch.
In Touch previously published a 2006 report from the Springdale, Arkansas Police Department that showed Duggar was investigated for allegedly molesting five girls from 2002-2003, when he was 14 years old. That report was heavily blacked out throughout.
The age of one of Duggar’s alleged victims was revealed in a contemporaneous report from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, which was also involved in the investigation. That report appeared to have blacked out only Duggar’s and his alleged victims’ names.
Both reports contain the same interview sheriff’s Detective Gary Connor conducted with the Duggar family in December 2006.
In the interview, Jim Bob Duggar told Connor that one of the incidents of molestation occurred in March 2003. He said that Josh Duggar had called him to say that he’d inappropriately touched a 5-year-old girl who was sitting on his lap as he read to her. The Duggar patriarch also told the detective that his son put his hand up a girl’s dress “sometime during this time frame.”
The sheriff’s report, which reads more cleanly than the Springdale police report, also makes it easier to ascertain the timeline of the alleged molestation incidents. Jim Bob Duggar told the detective that his son came crying to him in March 2002 to say that he’d inappropriately touched girls “4 to 5 times” while they were sleeping. He said Josh Duggar came to him again in July 2002 to say that he’d inappropriately touched another girl, according to the report.
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