In 2015, Josh Duggar experienced his first brush with scandal after police reports that revealed that he had molested five females, including four of his sisters, years earlier. And now, in the days before her memoir, Holy Disruptor, hits shelves, cousin Amy Duggar is opening up about a confrontation she had with Josh during that time and the “creepy” way he responded to one of her questions about the incident.
When the news went public, Amy asked Josh about it.
As Amy told People in a new interview, one of the first questions she asked Josh at the time was why he never tried to abuse her, too, since they spent so much time together as kids. He responded that he “knew better.”
“It was the creepiest smile,” she said. “In that moment, I just looked at him, and I was just like, ‘I don’t know you at all.”
She was on a “mission.”
Though she admitted that confronting Josh was “sad and terrifying,” she knew it was something that she needed to do, adding, “I was going over there with a mission. I wasn’t getting any answers, and I’m not one of these to back down.”
The molestation scandal — along with Josh’s subsequent Ashley Madison scandal and his later conviction on charges involving child sexual assault material (CSAM) — led Amy to feel like Josh was a total stranger to her, despite how close they’d been growing up.
“It’s that realization that all the times he’s texted, and laughed, and we’ve sent memes to each other, and he called, and we had double dates, and all the things. I’m like, ‘I don’t know you at all,'” she said.
She and Josh still talked regularly before his 2021 arrest.
On Wednesday, Amy told Us Weekly that Josh texted her just two weeks before he was arrested on charges that would eventually lead to him spending more than a decade behind bars.
“He texted me two weeks before he was arrested, sending me memes,” she said. Later, Amy added, “That is the scariest thing, to know that you’ve known someone your whole life, and yet, you don’t know them at all.”
Now, Amy says she has a “tiny bit of grace” for her cousin.
In her conversation with People, Amy said she has a “tiny, tiny, very small, very minute amount” of grace for Josh, knowing that he didn’t get the proper help from parents Jim Bob and Michelle after the molestation scandal, when he really needed it.
“I know that if you have a problem with something, and you go and ask your parents, and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this issue. I need to talk to someone about it.’ And you’re trying to reach out to get help, you’re trying to change, you’re trying to figure out where is that coming from, and all that, and then it kind of gets pushed aside, or not really dealt with,” she said. “But more of like, ‘Hey, okay, we’re going to send you here and just get you out of the house, and they’ll talk to you there as you build houses,’ or whatever. That’s not true help. That’s not true therapy.”
