UNITED STATES
Talking Points Memo

By SARAH POSNER | SEPTEMBER 10, 2015

On May 21, the gossip magazine In Touch published an explosive, career-crushing report about a beloved figure in the religious right: Josh Duggar, the oldest child of the ultra-conservative Christian family of TLC’s hit reality show 19 Kids and Counting, had, as a teenager, sexually abused five minor girls.

“Bombshell Duggar Police Report: Jim Bob Duggar Didn’t Report Son Josh’s Alleged Sex Offenses for More Than a Year,” blared the instantly viral online headline. The cover of the tabloid that would sell at supermarket checkouts across the country was even more lurid: “House of Horrors,” a reference to In Touch’s discovery that four of Josh’s victims were his younger sisters.

At the time of the In Touch revelations, Duggar was a 27-year-old married father of three with another on the way, and the executive director of a…