While most of the Duggar family prides itself on its squeaky clean, wholesome image, there’s been one member of the 19 Kids and Counting family who’s really worked overtime to be quite the standout: Josh Duggar. Going all the way back to the early 2000s, Josh has made his mark as a controversial member of the giant family, and now that he’s serving out a sentence in federal prison for possessing and receiving child sexual assault material, there’s no going back from here.
Here’s the full time line of what happened to Josh Duggar and where he is today.
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Josh is the oldest of Michelle and Jim Bob's children.
He was their first child — with twins John David and Jana soon to follow — and is married to Anna Duggar. Together, they have seven children: Mackynzie, Meredith, Marcus, Michael, Mason, Maryella, and Madyson. Anna and Josh have lived near Josh’s family in Arkansas as well as close to Washington, DC, where Josh once worked in politics. Eventually, they moved to a warehouse on Michelle and Jim Bob’s property, and things haven’t been quite the same for them since.
Molestation accusations surfaced in 2015.
Thanks to leaked police documents in 2015, news broke that Josh had been involved in a molestation scandal, and it quickly became clear that some of his victims were his younger sisters. It was easy to deduce which Duggar daughters were involved — based on the ages and details in the report — even though their names were redacted from the documents. As punishment at the time, Josh was sent to a camp to do physical labor. But the fact remained that he had allegedly groped his younger sisters while they were asleep.
TLC pulled '19 Kids & Counting' from the air.
Even though the family and their reality show had been a staple for TLC, the network wasted no time in pulling 19 Kids & Counting from the air. At the time, it wasn’t straight up canceled, but older episodes no longer aired, and production on new episodes stopped — eventually leading to an official cancelation. Later, some of the Duggars would return as Counting On, focused on the older Duggar daughters, and Josh was not on that show.
Megyn Kelly interviewed the family.
Not only did Jim Bob and Michelle sit down with Megyn Kelly when she was a Fox News reporter, but so did Jill and Jessa, who chose to out themselves as two of Josh’s victims. Though it was obviously an emotional experience for them, the general sentiment was that this had happened years ago, and they’d moved past it as a family.
“I do want to speak up in his defense against people who are calling him a child molester or a pedophile or a rapist, some people are saying,” Jessa said in her interview. “I’m like, ‘That is so overboard and a lie really.’ I mean people get mad at me for saying that, but I can say this because I was one of the victims.”
Josh was part of the Ashley Madison leak.
Only months after the molestation scandals surfaced, Josh became a part of another sticky situation in August 2015. A data breach exposed Josh as one of the men who used dating site Ashley Madison to find women to cheat with, and he issued a public apology on the family’s blog.
“While espousing faith and family values, I have secretly over the last several years been viewing pornography on the internet and this became a secret addiction and I became unfaithful to my wife,” Josh wrote at the time. “I am so ashamed of the double life that I have been living and am grieved for the hurt, pain and disgrace my sin has caused my wife and family, and most of all Jesus and all those who profess faith in Him.”
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Josh and Anna chose to stay together.
Some fans might have assumed that Anna would leave Josh after the double whammy of the molestation scandal and the Ashley Madison debacle, but instead, she chose to stay with him — and they’ve been together ever since. In the middle of all the drama that summer, their daughter, Meredith, was born, and two years later, they welcomed their son, Marcus, into the world.
Josh continued to have run-ins with the law.
In 2019, there were rumors that Josh was the subject of an FBI raid — something that the family denied happened, though later, the truth of the matter would come out.
“We were shocked to see a news report today state that our home was raided by federal law enforcement agencies. This is not true. To the best of our knowledge, it’s also not true that any member of our family is the target of any investigation of any kind,” their statement claimed.
Josh was then arrested in 2021.
More than a year after the initial FBI raid, Josh was arrested by federal agents at his car dealership. Later, it was revealed that it was due to investigators discovering that Josh had been storing child sexual assault material on his computer at work, but at that point, that was just one piece of the puzzle.
He was convicted in December 2021.
Josh was forced to stay with family friends, the Rebers, while out on bail and awaiting his trial, since due to the nature of his crimes, he was not allowed to live with any minors, including his own children. When the case went to trial, Josh was convicted on both counts and immediately taken into custody.
Josh was sentenced in May 2022.
Judge Timothy L. Brooks ultimately sentenced Josh to 151 months behind bars — a little longer than 12 years — with strict conditions for his eventual release, at which point he would still be barred from living at home with any of his minor children. Josh has been serving out his sentence at a federal prison facility in Seagoville, Texas, ever since.
Josh filed an appeal, but it was denied.
After submitting a 64-page appeal brief claiming that he wasn’t given a fair trial in 2022, the final, final verdict was handed down in August 2023: His appeal had officially been denied.
Now, Josh continues to serve out his sentence in Texas, and it’s not clear what the future holds for him and Anna as they continue to be separated.
If you suspect child abuse, you can call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453 (1-800-4-A-Child), or go to Childhelp.org. The hotline is available 24/7.
