What to Know
When Josh Duggar was sentenced to 151 months in federal prison, he seemed ready to place blame anywhere he could, via the emails that have now made the rounds on social media. And in a post on YouTube with one of the emails he wrote to his mom, Michelle Duggar, you can see just how ready he was to find a way to make his mother feel at fault.
Josh was convicted of receiving and possessing child sexual abuse material. The material was found on his computer and he was found guilty, so there is no denying that. He continued to assert his innocence afterwards, and in the email to Michelle, he told her that she needed to watch her other children more closely. Presumably, as a dig at how she did or didn’t look after him. As far as Josh’s email rants go, this one is a doozy.
He seemed to partly blame Michelle for his conviction.
While Josh was in jail and waiting to be transferred to the federal prison where he would begin his long sentence, he was big mad. That goes without saying, sure, but once people got a look at the emails he sent to some of his family members while behind bars, that idea was pretty much confirmed. In the email to Michelle, Josh essentially reprimanded her for going the damage control route for the family and making sure their image was OK as his case made national headlines.
“The public statements and PR work to save shows and public images I feel were placed above family relationships and still are to this day!” Josh wrote to Michelle. “I still feel like you worry more about PR than anything else sometimes! I am not trying to shift blame for anything, I am saying please consider your role and change so that other children are not in same situations later!”
In the same email, Josh thanked Michelle for her help with wife Anna Duggar and their kids.
In the comments under the YouTube video with the letter, someone wrote, “Josh explaining to his parents how to take accountability for their failures, while taking none for his own failures is another level of delusion!”
Another person added, “The way he talks to his mom vs his dad just shows me how he views women. Blaming his parents for this is wild.”
People think Michelle Duggar treated him differently than his dad.
Maybe one reason for Josh lashing out at his mother in emails is because Michelle tried to hold him accountable for the actions he was convicted of. Years previously, the family dealt with the fallout of the public learning of Josh’s molestation of four of his sisters and an unnamed family friend from when they were all children. So for Michelle to call him out, so to speak, it’s almost expected for Josh to lash out at her and tell her, as a woman and mother, to know her place.
Is it any less icky and infuriating? No, not really. But in a Reddit thread about the family dynamic, someone speculated that Michelle treated Josh as less of a golden boy than his dad, Jim Bob Duggar. They shared a passage from Jill Duggar’s book Counting the Cost to prove it.
The Redditor quoted Jill’s book as mentioning Josh not taking the molestation scandal seriously at the time. And, she said to him, per the book, “It’s not your fault that this was released, but you need to know that you were behind all this. Don’t be so arrogant.”
The emails show another side of the Duggar family.
Some supporters of the Duggar family and fans of the show might have thought there was more to them than the scandals that came out one after another. But if ever there was a time to recognize how imperfect the family is, it’s now. The emails show not only another side of how. How Josh treated his parents and spoke of his siblings, but also what everyone seemed to think of him at the time of the emails.
Almost for the first time ever, there’s a peak behind the curtain that even long-time fans of the Duggars TLC shows were not privy to. Unfortunately. It also means they are going to batten down the hatches even harder for the future. But until then, these emails are certainly holding people over with the tea.
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