More Duggar Arrests
A reflection on a culture of warped power
Last week, Kendra Duggar was arrested for four counts of child endangerment and four counts of false imprisonment. This came on the heels of charges that her husband, Joseph, 31, had sexually assaulted a girl, then age nine. On a call with the victim’s father and a detective, Joseph reportedly confessed, saying his “intentions were not pure.”
The charges against Kendra came after a home inspection, following the molestation charge against her husband. Investigators found external locks on the doors at their home.
I know for many families raised with Bill Gothard’s teachings—and for whom the Duggars became the poster family—the arrests tear open old wounds. The Duggars, with their 19 kids, were long treated as ambassadors to the public for the copious reproduction encouraged by Gothard, and ultimately, he claimed, desired by God. They were a model for how Gothard’s teachings could be deployed to build righteous, godly families.
Years later, children of the Gothard generation opened up about all manner of abuse.
When the first set of allegations became public in 2015, concerning Josh Duggar’s molestation of his sisters and a babysitter, the public learned that a decade prior, Michelle and Jim Bob (the Duggar parents) got counseling for their children and added safety measures such as prohibiting sitting on “big boys’ laps” and separating girls’ and boys’ bedrooms with locks. (There were two later abuses on couches.) The third time Josh confessed, the family sent him to one of Gothard’s IBLP (Institute in Biblical Life Principles) training centers. Gothard was quoted in tabloids saying Josh Duggar found God at his training center and was reformed.
When the news became public, Duggar daughters Jessa Seewald and Jill Duggar spoke on Megyn Kelly’s show, The Kelly File, which to many looked like the survivors of abuse being trotted out to do PR clean-up for the family. At the time, Seewald, who identified herself as one of the victims, said it was melodramatic to call her brother a “pedophile,” “rapist,” or “child molester.”
To say the strategy of forgiving Josh and minimizing his assaults failed is underscored by the fact that Josh Duggar is now serving 12 years in prison for child pornography that included what officials called “depictions of sadistic abuse.”
It’s altogether possible that being on a reality show is enough to introduce chaos to a family, but there are unique pressures within Gothard’s sphere of influence that are also likely contributors to the specifics of this family’s sad situation.
First, the insular worldview elevates “purity” in such an extreme way that normal romantic exploration is prohibited. The Duggars famously practiced courtship with romantic touch (even a kiss) forbidden until the wedding day. They were also woefully uneducated about sex and sexual safety.
Certainly, some people made it through environments like this without turning to sexual abuse, but Gothard, the figurehead himself, has faced a range of allegations from unwelcome touch, to sexual harassment, to cover-up of abuse. Because Gothard’s subculture depended so much upon an aura of purity, disclosures of abuse were perceived as a threat to the whole project.
This can be seen in the way the Duggars (models for Gothard’s teachings) handled abuse of their own children in-house, in the way Gothard loyalists attacked those who spoke out against him with allegations of abuse.
Second, this is a worldview in which children are controlled via corporal punishment. I’ll highlight a passage from my first book, Disobedient Women, here, which details what it was like for some at Gothard’s training centers. One contact affiliated loosely with the Gothard lawsuit told me “he’d found evidence of harsh discipline for those who wound up at Gothard’s training centers, including disciplinary lock-in. He told me about doors being replaced due to damage caused by the kids inside trying to get out.”
I also added more background in a footnote:
Disturbing as they were, these allegations were not new. An Indianapolis investigative reporter had found stories of punishment of youth by spanking (sometimes with a wooden paddle, sometimes a metal rod), denial of food, and solitary confinement for days in the facility’s “prayer room.” Some young people at the Indianapolis Training Center, reporters found, had been sent there after encounters with the juvenile court system. Due to complaints, in January 2002, the training center’s director told reporters the spanking policy had ended; however, the “prayer room” would still be used.
The current charges against Joseph and Kendra Duggar, particularly concerning the external locks, raise the specter of confinement used as punishment.
And justified spirituality.
Now, like within much of evangelicalism generally, the teachings any given family adopts are rarely limited to one influence. Often folks within one stream will recommend a neighboring set of teachings, helping popularize an adjacent set of practices. (And elevating a friendly fellow influencer.) Many parents who homeschooled their kids using Gothard’s curricula also picked up the teachings of other leaders at homeschool conferences. In the Duggars’ case, this included Michael and Debi Pearl, who advised child training with a range of implements. For a time, Michelle Duggar encouraged other parents to use a method adapted from the Pearls.
Again, from Disobedient Women:
Michael and Debi Pearl, heads of something called No Greater Joy Ministries, encouraged parents to place objects of interest within reach of babies, then swat them with a rod or a switch (or spoon or flexible tubing) whenever they tried to touch the object in order to train them in obedience and submission to verbal commands. Michelle Duggar also detailed a version of this, called blanket training, in the book The Duggars: 20 and Counting! In blanket training, the child is expected to remain quiet and content on a blanket for longer increments of time and is punished for making noise or crawling off the blanket for a wanted toy or simply to leave the blanket. In her book, Duggar described herself coming “flying in” with “a stern word and a quick correction” if during blanket training a child made a loud noise or moved off the blanket.
I have interviewed sources raised in such a way. They describe how families with half a dozen or more children “achieve” a dutiful gaggle of kids, tidy, pressed and silent, sitting without fidgeting through church and any other activity. These are kids who have been conditioned and “trained” to avoid any behavior that is deemed rebellious or “spirited,” lest they receive physical punishment. (There’s overlap here too with those who followed James Dobson’s teachings.)
It’s wrenching to know how the impulse to protect and care for children was so twisted by systems that made the home a battlefield.
It’s a battlefield that mirrored the same sort of power that was asserted by figures like Gothard over families, and in turn, by some political figures trained by him, over a nation.
I find myself writing frequently about Douglas Wilson and the other men he is trying to turn into the next generation of evangelical influencers. Wilson himself is the modern-day inheritor of niche evangelical extremism, but in a lot of ways, his influence is a retread of Gothard (and Doug Phillips for that matter). Much as something like Canon Plus’s patriarchy infomercial Future Men seems new and radical—centering men in the church—this maneuver has been going on for decades, if not millennia.
I find myself writing quite a bit about those who survived being daughters in this system. They are the obvious victims of abuse in a system that demands double submission, from them as children and as girls in a patriarchal church model. But boys suffer too. They are told there is a single righteous way to grow up and become a man. It is a path of violence and asserting (often unearned) authority.
To protect our daughters from becoming women inside patriarchal institutions—and protect boys from becoming the sort of men who abuse such power—we need open dialogue about what extreme sexual teachings, warped gender roles, and abuse as “discipline” do to children.
We’re witnessing what comes of them as adults, and how the pattern repeats with tragedy in the next generation.
If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend Rev. Angela Denker’s Disciples of White Jesus, a book about the radicalization of white boyhood.
This is such a great overview on the Duggar situation and how it plays into evangelical culture!