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Joseph Duggar of ’19 Kids and Counting’ Faces Child Sex Abuse Charges
Mr. Duggar, a former star of the TLC reality show, was arrested in Arkansas and was awaiting extradition to Florida, where the authorities said he molested a 9-year-old girl in 2020.
by https://www.nytimes.com/by/hannah-ziegler · NY TimesJoseph Duggar, a former star of the TLC reality series “19 Kids and Counting,” which followed a large Arkansas family guided by conservative Christian values, was arrested on Wednesday on charges accusing him of molesting a 9-year-old girl in Florida in 2020, the authorities said.
The sheriff’s office in Bay County, Fla., said in a statement that Mr. Duggar, 31, repeatedly engaged in “unlawful sexual activity” with the girl in Panama City Beach, Fla., in 2020.
The girl, who is now 14, reported the sexual assault on Wednesday to the police in Tontitown, Ark., according to a statement from that department. Investigators determined that the assault happened in Bay County, Fla., and informed the sheriff’s office, which issued a warrant for Mr. Duggar’s arrest, the Tontitown police said.
The girl told investigators that Mr. Duggar “eventually apologized for his actions and the incidents stopped after the apology,” the Bay County Sheriff’s Office said in its statement.
Mr. Duggar was charged with lewd and lascivious molestation of a victim less than 12 years old, and with lewd and lascivious behavior conducted by a person 18 years or older, the sheriff’s office said. He is awaiting extradition to Bay County, the sheriff’s office said.
It was not immediately clear if Mr. Duggar had a lawyer. The Duggar family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
From 2008 to 2015, Mr. Duggar starred with his siblings and parents in the hit TLC reality series “19 Kids and Counting,” which followed the lives of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their 19 children over more than 200 episodes. The series was among TLC’s top performing shows during its 10-season run.
TLC pulled the show from the air in 2015 after allegations surfaced that the oldest Duggar child, Josh, had molested several girls when he was a teenager.
No criminal charges resulted from the allegations, but the Duggar parents told Fox News in 2015 that four of the five girls Josh Duggar had molested were his sisters.
In 2022, Josh Duggar was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for downloading child sexual abuse imagery after a closely watched trial in Fayetteville, Ark.
Prosecutors said that the eldest Duggar son downloaded around 600 photographs and seven videos of violent child sexual abuse, according to a sentencing memorandum.
A jury found him guilty in December 2021 of one count of receiving child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography. A judge later vacated the possession charge.
Several members of the Duggar family have publicly distanced themselves from their parents and Josh Duggar since his initial arrest in 2021.