Jessa Duggar Seewald, the third of 19 Kids and Counting parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s daughters, is one of brother Josh Duggar’s sexual molestation victims. Yet she doesn’t want people calling her brother a child molester.
Jessa Duggar–along with sister Jill Duggar Dillard, also one of their brother’s victims–spoke out briefly during an interview conducted by The Kelly File’s Megyn Kelly on Fox on Wednesday night.
“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 Duggar told Kelly of brother Josh Duggar. “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.”
ICYMI Jill Duggar and Jessa Duggar emotionally address Josh Duggar's molestation past in #DuggarInterview. Watch: http://t.co/9AJoareop6
— Perez Hilton (@PerezHilton) June 4, 2015
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar shared information during this interview that most of the public–including many 19 Kids and Counting fans–didn’t know. The most important fact she shared was that Josh Duggar and his victims–purportedly Jinger and Jana Duggar, in addition to Jill Duggar Dillard and Jessa Duggar Seewald–received accredited clinical counseling in the aftermath of the sexual molestations. Many believed the only counseling any of the family members had received was church based.
Michelle Duggar said during the interview that Jill and Jessa Duggar are feeling more victimized by the press than by what their brother did all those years ago.
They “have been victimized more by what has happened in the last couple of weeks than they were 12 years ago because, honestly, they didn’t even understand and know that anything had happened until after the fact when they were told about it,” she said.
Jessa & Jill among sisters molested by #JoshDuggar & 8 other revelations from new interview http://t.co/TsUZWGv3jo pic.twitter.com/HTXiK5kUhf
— ET Canada (@ETCanada) June 4, 2015
Both Jessa Duggar Seewald and Jill Duggar Dillard will speak more in depth in a continued interview with Megyn Kelly on The Kelly File, Friday night at 9:00 p.m. on Fox. It will certainly be interesting to get more of both sister’s perspectives on the crimes their brother committed against them and the aftermath that shattered the 19 Kids and Counting family’s silence several years later.
