Duggar Girls Open Up About How Josh Was 'Not to Be Trusted'
While Josh Duggar’s sexual abusing and cheating scandals made headlines this summer, they made heartache for his family members, who spoke out about their tumultuous year in detail on Sunday.
STORY: Josh Duggar’s Wife Speaks Out on Husband’s Sex Scandal
“It is your older brother, someone you love and trust and so definitely there was a period of time in our family when Josh was not to be trusted,” Jessa Duggar Seewald, 23, admitted on camera of the molestation she endured when Josh was a teen, around 2002. Her comment came during a teary video testimonial in the first of TLC’s three-part series, Jill & Jessa: Counting On. “He spent time away from home getting help and counseling.”
STORY: Why Jessa Duggar Finally Turned Against Her Older Brother
The girls put locks on their doors, and Jessa’s sister Jill Duggar Dillard, 24 (shown above, whom Josh also molested), said that the family got help of their own, as well.
Jessa Duggar Seewald (Photo: TLC)
“We had to go through lots of different steps, complete with counseling,” Jill revealed. “After that time, it was a really, really hard time on our family…[But] that was 12 years ago and the healing process started shortly after that happened. You know when something happens you go on with your life, you move on. We have chosen, Jessa and I can say that, we have chosen to forgive Josh and that is an important part of our own healing. If we do not forgive then we cannot move on.”
Josh Duggar (Photo: Getty Images)
And they did move on. “My parents would talk about that trust is not instantly rebuilt, and that you can forgive in your heart as much to say I am not going to hold bitterness against you but at the same time it is a period of time and a journey to rebuild the trust,” said Jessa. “Over the next couple of years it was Josh being able to prove to us and the family that he was worthy of being trusted and that relationship was really restored between us siblings and our parents.”
Josh, now a married father of four with wife Anna, “had worked hard to rebuild our trust in him and had become someone we could look up to,” she adds. So when Josh’s past abusing was made public news earlier this year, it opened the old wounds and victimized Jill and her sister all over again, said Jill, a new mother at the time. “We had moved on from there,” she said, “so for this to be released right after Israel was born, and all these happy occasions in my life, and to be thrown under the bus was really, really hard.”
Little did they know there was more to come. When the infidelity website Ashley Madison was hacked this summer, revealing that Josh was a member of the cheating network, the family experienced a whole new world of hurt. “Things were getting back to normal somewhat, and then another big news break, which shocked and surprised us all,” Jessa recalled. “Josh ended up confessing to us that he had become addicted to pornography and that he had been unfaithful to his wife and we were devastated.”
Josh and Anna Duggar (Photo: Josh Duggar/Instagram)
“It seemed like it was a bad dream, like, how could this happen?” Jessa continued. “As we as a family looked into this situation you have to wonder how did this happen? How do you get from this point to that point? How do you go from being in this wonderful marriage relationship to sort of living a double life and being unfaithful to your spouse?”
The sisters’ questions have yet to be answered, but it’s clear that they aren’t the only ones asking, ‘Where do we go from here?” Josh’s next-younger brother John David Duggar revealed that the scandals rocked his reality, too — and he told Josh exactly that. “I always wanted to be like him,” he said. “One of the toughest things I have ever had to tell my older brother is ‘I do not want to be like you anymore.’”
(Top photo: TLC)
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