They Duggars did things right………wait till you see the end of my post

Yes, it is very weird for me to blog on a story like this….but bear with me!

I haven’t a CLUE what the Duggar popularity is based on;  I still don’t understand why anybody’d ever raise them to celebrity status just for having too many kids and getting their daughter married, but I had heard about the recent scandal and did see how the media was handling it.  I’ve seen the secularists insult them the minute a hair’s out of place, etc.,  that’s par for the course.  But this recent ‘scandal’ of their eldest son, Josh, interested me not so much about what the media was saying but I was curious on how they’d handled it when it happened.   So I watched Megyn Kelly last night on FOX and saw the full hour on it.

I don’t know that I’ve seen a Christian family do things as correctly and as Godly as they did.   They even took their son to the police though he’d stopped by that time.  The ‘touching’ apparently was always on top of girls’ clothing and only lasted seconds, but no touching is proper unless invited, let’s be clear.

He came to them at the age of about 12 and admitted he’d done this.  They were very concerned and talked to him about it.  And he did it again.  They then removed him from the home and had him stay with a Christian man who counsels young boys in all types of character issues.  Then he came back and I think he did it again?  Not sure.  By that time, the Duggars had implemented ‘safeguards,’ as they put it, meaning they’d made sure no brother and sis were alone for any length of time, no sitting on laps, etc.  Then they took the boy to an accredited therapist and things were going well but they decided he should go to the police and he should confess there.  When they went to the police they very, very wisely took a close family friend with them to witness it all.  They had no idea what the police would do to him, so that was really a courageous thing to do.  He’d also been told by his parents to confess to the sisters (who’d been asleep when he touched them and weren’t even aware of it).   All that was pretty much settled about 12 years ago, having only lasted a very short time, maybe a year.  The police did nothing but did seal the records, as is mandatory for any juvenile situation.   I don’t think I’ve got everything quite right, but the main points are:

– the parents made it clear to Josh after he first came to him how wrong this was.

– they told him he should confess to his sisters though they knew nothing about it.

– as any parents would, they hoped that would be the end of it, and when he confessed again, they removed him from the house and set guidelines for brother/sister contact as I described above.

– they got a loving man who had success with young men and he helped a lot.

– they made Josh go to law enforcement knowing they might send him to juvenile detention but knowing it was the right thing to do.

I  know….none of us care much about this family except to wish them well, of course.   But, I wanted to blog on it because they impressed me more than I’d have ever thought they would.  They’re not well educated from their grammar, etc., but they’re smart and they’re good people and I believe they did the right thing.

I hope they get a break from the secularists who are doing all they can to paint them in a kind of light as if they didn’t care about their daughters, and didn’t remove him from the house early enough, etc etc.   I always believe it’s good to put your own feet in others’ shoes and that NONE in the media would/could have handled it better.

That’s that………just wanted to say I was stunned at the fact that I admire what they did and I thought Kelly handled it well.  The good news is that, while this isn’t entirely an oddity for 12-14 year old boys, the statistics show that 90% of them never do it again.

Let’s hope families who’ve faced this get some comfort from that fact, after having learned by the example of the Duggars what I think was just the right way for a family to handle this.

UPDATE:   After I’d finished this post, I went back to a news headlines page and saw this “SISTER OF REALITY TV STAR JOSH DUGGAR SAYS HE VICTIMIZED HER” and I thought “holy COW, all I just wrote is wrong…she’s not supportive of him, he VICTIMIZED her.”…. Then I read the article…here’s her quote:  “Jessa Duggar, featured like her brother in the family’s TLC series, “19 Kids and Counting,” told Fox in an interview conducted in Arkansas on Wednesday that she wanted to defend him. She said allegations he’s a child molester or pedophile are “so overboard and a lie,” Fox reported.”   Wouldn’t YOUR headline might be “Sister of Josh Duggar stands by her brother” ?? But the media loves the “HE VICTIMIZED HER”, don’t they.

Z