What to Know
Anyone who has been following the news about Joseph and Kendra Duggar’s arrests knows that it’s been a long week for the family, and now, Jinger is speaking out. In a very brief episode of The Jinger & Jeremy Podcast that debuted on Wednesday, Jinger responded to her brother’s arrest, and (understandably) it sounds like she and husband Jeremy Vuolo are still reeling from this unexpected turn of events.
Jinger called the experience “hard and painful.”
Last week, news broke that Joseph had been arrested on March 18 after he was accused of molesting a 9-year-old girl, and two days later, he and Kendra were both hit with new charges of child endangerment and false imprisonment — and these charges were totally separate from the original incident that sent Joseph behind bars.
It sounds like no one in the family knew this was happening and found out just as the rest of the world did, including Jinger and Jeremy.
In the short, five-minute episode of the podcast that she shared on YouTube, Jinger called it “one of those weeks that feels like years.”
“I did not think my heart could break like it has this week,” Jinger said. “The pain and heartbreak that we’ve had over this and just thinking of how it’s affected so many — yeah, it’s just unthinkable. It’s so hard and painful on many levels.”
She said that her oldest brother Josh’s previous arrest did nothing to prepare her for something like this happening again.
Though the oldest Duggar child, Josh, was convicted on charges involving child sexual assault material (CSAM) in 2021 during a very public trial, Jinger said it still didn’t make what’s happening now with Joseph any less difficult to process.
“You can’t be prepared for news like this, even though we’ve experienced something very similar before, with one of my other siblings, who made unthinkable choices, decisions that have affected all of us,” Jinger admitted. “And yet the pain and hurt that’s caused to us, but then to so many others, is just so hard. It’s hard to know what to do sometimes, moving forward. You just feel the weight of it.”
They aren’t the only members of the family to speak out.
Jill Duggar was one of the first to issue a statement about the arrests, sharing her thoughts in a post on her family’s website.
“We were shocked yesterday evening to learn of Jill’s brother (Joseph Duggar’s) arrest,” said the joint statement from Jill and her husband Derick Dillard. “We first learned of anything related to his charges yesterday via a text from a friend who messaged us about the recent media reports of Joseph’s arrest and his alleged confession to molesting a juvenile female in 2020. We are shocked and heartbroken.”
They continued, “We strongly condemn abuse. We support the rule of law and hope that justice will be achieved. Our hearts go out to the innocent juvenile victim of this unspeakable crime and her family.”
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