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Fox News interview with Duggars (highlights)
The full transcript can be viewed here, and part of the video interview can be watched there as well. Here are some particularly relevant highlights:
On how Josh told his parents:
Quote:
MEGYN KELLY: Take us back to 2002. How did you first learn that this was a problem with Josh?
JIM BOB DUGGAR, "19 KIDS AND COUNTING": Well, 12 years ago, we went through one of the most darkest times that our family have ever gone through, and our son Josh came to us on his own, and he was crying. And he had just turned 14, and he said that he had actually improperly touched some of our daughters. And it was --
MICHELLE DUGGAR, "19 KIDS AND COUNTING": We were shocked. I mean, we were just devastated. I don't think any parent is prepared for a trauma like that. And I think we had one way of hope and that Josh had a tender conscience, and he was the one that came and shared on his own even though the others really didn't know anything of his wrongdoing.
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On how Jim Bob & Michelle initially handled the situation:
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KELLY: And what was their reaction when they learned it from you?
J. B. DUGGAR: They didn't -- they really didn't know. Actually, what happened was we asked them at first if anything happened. And then it was after some other things happened that we actually shared with them, and we actually -- but we took a lot of steps. And first we tried to deal with this in-house as parents. We were in shock and we were trying to figure out what was the next step. But really, looking back, we did the best we could under the circumstances.
KELLY: You're saying, what am I going to do? You're saying, he says he's touched two of the daughters, and you don't know what to do, right?
J. B. DUGGAR: Didn't know. Because at that point now nobody knew about it besides Michelle and I and Josh. And so we thought, what do we do with this information? And the girls, we talked to them, and they didn't know that anything had happened because they were asleep. And so we talked to him, we put all kinds of punishments on him, we watched him, like, all the time. I took him to work with me, and he just -- I mean, we just poured our life into it.
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On why they waited to pursue counseling or alert the authorities:
Quote:
KELLY: Some people have said, why did they wait? Why didn't they go to the authorities or go for the counseling at the very first time he came to you?
J. B. DUGGAR: You know, I talked to somebody that worked at one of those juvenile youth sex offender facilities, and he described how they actually take care of these situations down there, and the success rate is not very good. And so we felt like that going from a perspective of really reaching his heart first would be important, and so that's the reason we sent him down to Little Rock to work with this man.
KELLY: Did legal ever pop into your mind? Like we may have legal obligations?
J. B. DUGGAR: You know, what? As parents you're not mandatory reporters. The law allows for parents to do what they think is best for their child. And so we got him out of the home, and we sent him down to this place, and that was really probably the best decision we made through this whole process, because it was at that place -- this was the first time Josh has been out of the home.
KELLY: He was 15 at this point.
J. B. DUGGAR: He had just turned 15. And it was that the point that he came into himself, and God really worked in his life. As a matter of fact, he broke. And he went and asked God to forgive him. He went back and asked those who he had offended to forgive him. But we felt like the last jurisdiction of who to make things right with was the law.
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On ensuring the daughters' safety before they removed Josh from the home:
Quote:
KELLY: And prior to him leaving, were you concerned for the safety of your daughters?
M. DUGGAR: Well, we definitely put safeguards in our home.
J. B. DUGGAR: Yes, and we also talked to our daughters and reminded them about wrong and right touch and about if anybody ever touched you in a wrong way for you to come and tell your mom immediately.
M. DUGGAR: Immediately. And we tell them that you have a safe place to share your heart. And so we were trying to protect and watch and make sure that their hearts were safe, they had a safe place to talk, and at the same time putting boundaries and safeguards up in our home.
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On alerting the authorities:
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KELLY: How did you choose the person to whom you would surrender him? Because there's been some question about whether you chose a friend, someone who you knew would go easy on him.
J. B. DUGGAR: Yes. I had a towing business for years, and so I did know a lot of the officers around here, but we went into the Arkansas State Police --
KELLY: At police headquarters?
J. B. DUGGAR: -- at the police headquarters. Walked in, this man was there. We went in and talked to him and said, hey, my son has something that he needs to share with you. And we actually took a witness with us. We went in and sat down and he shared everything.
KELLY: He told it all.
J. B. DUGGAR: He told everything. And we had no idea that what that officer was going through on his own.
KELLY: So the audience knows, that officer is now in jail for 56 years for child ****ography charges. Did you have any idea he was involved in that at the time?
M. DUGGAR: That came out years later. We were, like, shocked to read that in the paper.
KELLY: So the critics were saying, oh, they chose that guy because they thought he would be sympathetic.
J.B. DUGGAR: I didn't know anything about this guy besides that he was an officer there at headquarters.
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On being accused of hypocrisy for their views on the LGBT community:
Quote:
KELLY: The main charge we've heard from your critics has been they are hypocrites. They preach family values. Josh once said we are the epitome of conservative values, yet they had this secret and they weren't honest with the world about who they were.
J.B. DUGGAR: I don't think you go up to total strangers and say, hi, my name is so-and-so and I want you to know everything I did as a child, and just share about your past. Every family has things happen in the families. Some families may have darker things than others, but everybody deals with something.
KELLY: What the critics are going for is that you shouldn't have been preaching about moral values when you had a secret like this in your own family, that you should be calling other people sinners when you yourselves are sinners.
J.B. DUGGAR: Our son violated god's principles from doing some improper touching. That was terrible. But yet I think it's been recently said that what Josh did was inexcusable but it was not unforgivable.
KELLY: Like Huckabee said that. I know he's a friend of your family. Michelle, let me ask you, because you were in the news for making a robo call that suggested transgender people might want to go into the bathrooms of girls -- locker rooms of girls and that they may be child molesters. Folks have used that in the past week against you saying how could you unfairly, in their view, compare transgender people to child molesters, knowing what you know about Josh?
M. DUGGAR: I think that protecting young girls and not allowing young men or men in general to go into a girls' locker room is just common sense.
KELLY: But this is different because you injected child molestation into it.
J.B. DUGGAR: I think you actually said pedophile, and a pedophile is an adult that preys on children. Josh was actually 14 and just turned 15 when he did what he did, and I think the legal definition was 16 and up for being an adult preying on a child. So he was a child preying on a child.
KELLY: You do not view Josh as a pedophile?
J.B. DUGGAR: No.
KELLY: What I'm asking is can you understand the critics' reaction to this news?
M. DUGGAR: I can understand that, but I know that every one of us have done things wrong. That's why Jesus came. I feel like this is more about -- there is an agenda and there are people that are purposing to try to bring things out and twisting them to hurt and slander.
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Quote:
KELLY: Do you think in particular your Christian beliefs are an issue here?
J.B. DUGGAR: I think people on the outside say Christians are supposed to live this perfect life. No. All of us as Christians, we struggle every day.
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Megyn Kelly's interview with Jill and Jessa Duggar, two of Josh's victims, will air Friday night.
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