Jill Duggar Talks Safeguards ’19 Kids and Counting’ Parents Put in Place After Josh Duggar Sexually Molested Her and Sisters

Jill Duggar says her parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, put some excellent safeguards in place after she and her sisters were sexually molested by their brother, Josh Duggar. The 19 Kids and Counti...
Jill Duggar Talks Safeguards ’19 Kids and Counting’ Parents Put in Place After Josh Duggar Sexually Molested Her and Sisters
Written by Kimberly Ripley
  • Jill Duggar says her parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, put some excellent safeguards in place after she and her sisters were sexually molested by their brother, Josh Duggar. The 19 Kids and Counting star talked with The Kelly File’s Megyn Kelly about those safeguards in an interview that airs Friday night.

    So what were some of those safeguards?

    “Not being alone,” Jill Duggar Dillard said on The Kelly File in preview excerpts released earlier on Friday to Us Weekly. “My parents said, ‘Okay, we’re not going to do this hide-and-seek thing where two people go off and hide together.'”

    In the first part of Megyn Kelly’s interview with the 19 Kids and Counting family that aired Wednesday, Jim Bob Duggar said Josh Duggar came to him at the age of 14 and explained what he’d done to his sisters. In addition to Jill Duggar Dillard and Jessa Duggar Seewald, it is believed that Jana Duggar and Jinger Duggar were the other sibling sexual molestation victims. There is one more victim–not a member of the Duggar family.

    “He came to us and was crying and told us what happened,” Jim Bob recalled, adding that “safeguards” were then put into place as a preventative measure against further sexual molestation.

    Jill Duggar explained more about those safeguards.

    “Locks on the doors,” she said, point-blank. “You know, everybody’s in bed. Girls in the girls’ room. Boys in the boys’ room–as a mother now I look back, and I think, you know, my parents did such an amazing job for me. Even when we went through the DHS investigation they complimented my parents on what an amazing job they did through that process.”

    “I hope I can set up the same safeguards in my family that they did,” Jill Duggar added.

    A psychological and emotional struggle followed the sexual molestation of the 19 Kids and Counting sisters.

    “I was angry at first, I was like, ’How could this happen?’” Jill Duggar tells Megyn Kelly in tonight’s broadcast. “And then, you know, my parents explained to us what happened and then Josh came and asked each of us, individually, I know, he asked me to forgive him. And I had to make that choice to forgive him, you know? And it wasn’t something that somebody forced, like, ‘Oh, you need to do this.’ It’s like, you have to make that decision for yourself.”

    Jim Bob Duggar explained to Jana, Jill, Jinger, and Jessa Duggar that forgiveness doesn’t always go hand in hand with trust.

    “My dad explained to us, he said, ‘You know there’s a difference between forgiveness and trust. That’s not the same thing.’ You know, you forgive someone and then you have boundaries. Forgiveness with boundaries. Trust comes later,” Jill explained. “Josh destroyed that trust at the beginning, and so he had to rebuild that. I think when he came back, that was…the point of rebuilding.”

    Will you be tuning in this evening–Friday, June 5th–for the second portion of Megyn Kelly’s interview with Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, as well as with Jill Duggar Dillard and Jessa Duggar Seewald?

    Hopefully there will be greater understanding of what the Duggar family experienced following the sexual molestations Josh Duggar committed.

    Get the WebProNews newsletter delivered to your inbox

    Get the free daily newsletter read by decision makers

    Subscribe
    Advertise with Us

    Ready to get started?

    Get our media kit