It’s been nearly three months since Josh Duggar was convicted of receiving and possessing child pornography, but amazingly, we’re still learning new, damaging information about the sexual predator and the investigation that brought him down.
Last week, for example, it was revealed that one of Josh’s victims attempted to fight him off as he molested her.
And earlier today, we reported on the revelation that Jill Duggar reported Josh’s sex crimes to her parents, but it appears that Jim Bob and Michele Duggar did not take any action to prevent future attacks.
Now, we have more incriminating news about the situation thanks to newly unsealed transcripts from Josh’s recent trial.
When news of Josh’s molestation of his sisters first came to light back in 2015, his parents claimed that they went to the police immediately after learning of the attacks.
We now know that that’s not true.
A longtime Duggar friend named Bobye Holt took the stand and finally clarified the events that led to Josh’s crimes being reported to Arkansas state police.
Josh briefly courted Bobye’s daughter, but the relationship was called off when the Duggars learned of Josh’s deviant behavior and decided that he was not yet ready to date anyone.
The two families were so close, however, that Josh continued to pay visits to the Holts, and he came to think of Bobye and her husband as mentors and confidants.
Eventually, he came clean to the Holts about his predatory attacks on his younger sisters.
“He said that he went to [Jane Doe 1] as she was sleeping and that he was going up underneath her blankets to start to touch her and that she woke up and hit him," Bobye Holt told the court.
(The victims were not named, as all of them were underage at the time of the attacks.)
“He told me she snitched on him," she continued.
On Reddit and elsewhere, online sleuths who have been watching this case closely from the very beginning have concluded that Jill, the eldest of Josh’s victims, was the one who courageously told her parents that she had been assaulted.
Bobye says she became the second person to approach the Duggars’ about the ongoing problem regarding their eldest son.
“I went to tell Jim Bob and Michelle, but they said they didn’t want to hear it," she told the court.
In his own testimony, Jim Bob admitted that “[Josh] had touched [Jane Does 1 to 4] when they were sleeping on the breast over their clothes."
He added, "They didn’t wake up.”
Jim Bob made no mention of the fact that one of Josh’s victims told him about the attack and he failed to act.
Nor did he admit that he waited several years before he reported Josh’s crimes to the police.
And of course, he didn’t mention that he went to the cops only after being pressured by friends and neighbors.
Jim Bob took the stand for one of Josh’s pre-trial evidentiary hearings back in November of 2021.
The goal of the hearing was to determine whether or not the prosecution should be permitted to mention Josh’s assaults against his sisters during his child pornography trial.
Even though Jim Bob knew the purpose of the hearing before he testified, he still became irate when the molestations were mentioned, lashing out at both the police and the tabloid that first broke the story.
“I did not write the police report. I don’t know what all was put in that. I don’t know who put… you know, I don’t know what the investigator," he snapped at the DA when questioned about the specifics of Josh’s earlier crimes.
"You will have to bring them in and ask them.”
From there, Jim Bob played the victim card, complaining that when he and his wife finally reported the crimes that had taken place under their roof, they were assured of privacy.
“It was a very difficult time in our family’s life. When we went to the Child Safety Center, they told us this all would be kept confidential," the father of 19 continued.
"And for you guys to use a tabloid to bring it back up, it’s very unprofessional.”
Needless to say, Jim Bob didn’t receive much sympathy from the judge.
And thus far, the court of public opinion has been no more compassionate.
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