(tense music)
[Reporter 1] A bombshell as a dark family secret explodes out into the open.
[Reporter 2] Josh Duggar, the family's eldest,
was accused of repeatedly molesting five underage girls.
[Reporter 3] Some of them include his own siblings.
[Reporter 2] Trooper Joseph Hutchens gave Josh a very stern talk.
Hutchens, by the way, is now serving 56 years in prison for child pornography.
- It's hard to sweep this under the rug. - Mhm.
I mean a lot of people are feeling, "Hey, they weren't being really truthful to us."
[Derick] I honestly (Jill sniffles)
She called me crying whenever all this came up. No one knew any of this.
We were engaged, and I had no idea that this had happened.
Thanks. (sniffles)
[Deanna] When I learned of what happened with my nieces, I broke down and cried,
and I couldn't even be there for them,
because it was hush hush, and nobody told me the truth.
[Jill] My dad and the producers and people, they would talk about it.
There was an urgency to figure out how the show was gonna be handled
in the wake of 2015 events.
As far as recovery and damage control,
you just feel like the burden, and the weight falls on you to help,
'cause you're the only one who can.
(tense music continues)
Tonight for the very first time,
the family that became famous for their conservative Christian values,
and their 19 children, speak out.
Take us back to 2002. How did you first learn that there was a problem with Josh?
He was just curious about girls, and he had gone in,
and just basically touched them over their clothes while they were sleeping.
- They didn't even know he had done it. - Mhm.
[Jim Holt] I don't remember that's the way that happened.
He wasn't really honest totally in that interview.
And that thing about sending Josh in the IBLP facility wasn't true.
Did you ever worry that the treatment didn't work,
especially with so many young children in the house?
No, no. Josh was a changed person.
[Jill] Even after that, me and Jessa just felt the weight of it fall on us.
In moments, a preview of what is sure to be the big story,
the sisters, two of them,
who identify themselves as Josh's victims, for the first time.
[Jen] After the Megyn Kelly show came out,
there was a huge leak at the Ashley Madison website.
[Reporter 2] Another bombshell.
Former reality show star Josh Duggar again facing public embarrassment
after being outed on Ashley Madison,
the site known for matching up married cheaters.
[Jim Bob] I guess you've read about it in the newspapers or seen it on TV,
but we've gone through a lot of trials.
[Deanna] It could have all been taken care of in a different way.
If my brother had just woke up, and realized he needed to help his son.
I don't think I need to talk to Josh. I'm gonna talk to our Heavenly Father.
[Reporter 8] Now, porn star, Danica Dillon details her alleged sex with Josh Duggar.
Though it was consensual, it more or less felt like I was being raped.
She had sex with Duggar while his wife was pregnant.
He had paid her thousands to remain quiet.
[Josh Pease] The Duggar family is not a bizarre fascination.
It is a horrifying glimpse of a story that was told over, and over, and over again,
in so many different families.
[Amy] It stirred something in a lot of people,
and they finally got that magnifying glass out going, wait, what is this?
What's really, really going on?
[Interviewer] Okay.
So what's it like sitting here?
- Surreal. - Yeah.
That's definitely the word. (both laughing)
Okay. (laughs)
(curious music)
This is a lot more than, like, TikTok selfies.
(indistinct background chatter)
Ooh. (lips fluttering)
At this point, you know, I've pretty much burned every bridge of my family,
just by being here, but whatever. (laughs)
(Lindsey clears throat)
[Lindsey] My friend, kind of, gave me this really wise advice,
and he was like, you need to step boldly into this moment,
because this is the sacred space that you manifested years ago
when you said that this needs to stop, and people need to know what really happened.
And, so, I'm trying to just (exhales)
So, back when the Duggars first were on TLC, I was so weirded out.
No, no, no. This is not I don't need to watch this, 'cause I've lived it.
(suspenseful music)
I was introduced to the world of Bill Gothard when I was eight years old.
It started actually with my parents attending IBLP seminars.
So, I was taken out of school.
I knew what public school structure was,
and this idea of sitting in the basement with my two brothers,
with milk cartons and some plywood for desks.
I was like, "What is this honky-tonk situation going on here?" (laughs)
[Floyd] The Duggars, they spoke at IBLP conferences
long before I ever heard of them on television.
When they gained some popularity there,
I was shocked, dismayed. (Tara laughing)
[Tara] My parents decided to homeschool.
I know that they wanted to have a hand in what kind of education we got.
When we first met, when he said he was homeschooled,
you could have knocked me over.
I'm like, "Oh, then he definitely understands why I am such a weirdo."
(both laughing)
Being a homeschooled kid, like, you can spot 'em a mile away.
You just like, "Oh, they were homeschooled."
We started homeschooling when I was in second grade.
One of the things that I noticed when I first started watching the Duggars,
everyone is very meek and mild.
Had you put a video camera on my family as children,
you would've seen us the same way.
[Chad] I was the first fully homeschooled child in our family.
You really weren't supposed to watch TV in the IBLP,
and we certainly didn't most of the time.
If you did have a TV,
it was supposed to be hooked up just to a VCR,
and you would only watch things that were approved by IBLP or produced by them.
And I hope that the time we spend together through these gospel piano lessons
[Chad] And to be quite honest, it was very boring.
[Pianist] And experience the joy.
My parents lived in the back woods of Walker County, Alabama.
There were very few options for them.
You either worked in a coal mine, you worked at a steel mill,
or you just starved.
When my dad had the opportunity to become a pastor,
especially in a movement that was supposed to stand up in the last days,
well, yes, of course he went for it.
I mean it beats working in a steel mill. (laughs)
(Tia sighing)
My background, well, I started (laughs), I grew up in Michigan.
I became directly involved with IBLP as a new mom.
They were looking for new families to bring into IBLP way of thinking.
I was a young wife looking for somebody to teach me,
and I'm sure the Duggars had mentors, too,
that taught them how they should be doing these things.
I never went to public school at all. I was homeschooled from day one.
My mother's childhood was very, very traumatic. A lot of abuse happened.
IBLP offered her solace, and promised her peace and a safe space,
and she bought all in.
She had been going to Bill Gothard seminars
from the time the basic seminar became a thing.
(suspenseful music continues)
[Brooke] Bill Gothard was traveling around playing to huge coliseums of people,
and he's doing one every single week.
[Tia] IBLP spread through my church when I was a kid.
The Gothard market is churched people.
They were to leave their seminar, go back to their home churches,
be influences for that program, and it caught on.
It spread through the Southern Baptist churches.
It was also spreading in the national scene.
[Brooke] We typically think of a cult as having a commune,
or having this, you know, centered geographic location.
Gothard didn't have that.
Bill Gothard's not a pastor. There was no specific church.
[Brooke] His teachings became the means
with which he exerted control over his followers.
[Bill Gothard] Every one of us has umbrellas of protection.
If we get out from under that umbrella,
we expose ourself to the realm and the power of Satan's control.
Bill Gothard's main thrust was authority, authority, authority.
[Brooke] God creates an umbrella of authority over us.
The kids obey the parents, the parents obey the pastor,
the pastor obeys Bill Gothard, and I guess Bill Gothard talks to God himself.
You must always obey your chain of command,
and that included wives obeying their husbands.
If you're under your umbrella of authority nothing bad can happen to you.
[Josh Pease] Gothard's whole vibe was that he was the good authority.
It's like, "Look, authority's not so bad.
Look how reasonable it is, look how calm I am. Look at how much sense this makes."
(crowd applauding) (suspenseful music continues)
[Bill Gothard] I am thrilled to be able to say
that we can present to your sons and daughters,
the whole world on a golden platter.
[Josh Pease] What Gothard was selling was, sort of,
this mythical idea of returning to a time in which things were better.
Better for who? It wasn't better for the women,
who were being abused by their husbands, and it wasn't getting reported.
It wasn't better for black people
who didn't have the same rights as white people.
It really was better for white Protestants, is what was meant by that.
(suspenseful music continues)
Two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate.
[Reporter 4] Negroes made inroads towards integration of schools in the deep south.
[Josh Pease] With Brown versus board of education in 1954,
the government starts insisting on the desegregation of schools.
[Reporter 4] For two days, white crowds gathered at the school.
[Josh Pease] White evangelical Christians are saying,
"We don't want our kids to be a part of the public school system anymore."
A part of the homeschooling movement is in response to that.
What made Gothard so effective is that he was able to realize
that there is a way to dovetail all these things he's teaching
that would also capture the momentum of people who are wanting to say,
"I wanna take back control" over their kids' education.
Out of that, the Advanced Training Institute is born.
(suspenseful music continues)
In 1984, Bill Gothard launches the Advanced Training Institute,
a homeschool curriculum.
[Tara] ATI can be interchangeable sometimes with IBLP.
The people inside of that program will refer to it both ways.
[Jill] We were a part of ATI from as early as I can remember.
We liked to go to the ATI conferences.
At the time they only had one conference a year.
People who were in ATI, I felt like,
were very concerned about any kind of public education for their kids,
because their kids would get brainwashed,
which is true, like, those things can happen.
[Josh Duggar] Well, the purpose of the Advanced Training Institute
is to train up young men and women to become leaders of the next century.
Young people need a role model, someone to look up to.
[Bill Gothard] 20 years ago, 102 families gathered together in the north woods
and began ATI.
For 10 years, we met to write the material,
3,000 pages of the Wisdom Booklets.
The Wisdom Booklets, the fundamental building blocks of our entire education.
Learning to see life from God's perspective,
because who needs an actual academic education
when you've got Wisdom Booklets.
[Lindsey] There were 54 Wisdom Booklets.
There were categories within the Wisdom Booklet,
and so each week you would focus on one category.
- At the end of the year you start over. - That was an entire grade.
In our Wisdom Booklet on page 20, 23 Please sit down.
[Floyd] I deeply am sorrowful for anyone
who only had this material as an education, because it is no such thing.
[Jim Bob] We went to a conference, and we heard about homeschooling,
and then we met several families that homeschooled,
and we saw how mature the children were,
and we thought we really want those character qualities
in our children's lives.
[Jill] We definitely read the Wisdom Booklets.
I do remember the character qualities.
[Voice] Orderliness.
Persuasiveness. Obedience. (bear growls)
[Jill] We would memorize their definitions.
The entire curriculum, of course, is based on the Sermon on the Mount.
(curious music)
They would take a passage and they would purport to teach us
everything that we needed to know academically, just from that passage.
[Brooke] Bill Gothard promised that his homeschool program
would be the equivalent of a high school diploma
with a pre-law degree, and a pre-medical degree, like, two bachelor's degrees.
"Sign up for the Wisdom Booklets."
We teach our children that evolution is something
that a lot of people are teaching, but yet it's totally unscientific.
You can see how the earth was formed and, with the flood and all of the things,
that science really backs up what scripture says.
[Danielle] They were not being very well educated,
and that was largely by design, right?
You're not gonna teach the kids about dangerous ideas
that exist outside the family's ideology.
A lot of what they taught was just conjecture from Bill Gothard
and from the other authors that he brought in to write his books.
(curious music continues)
[Voice] Fossils did not accumulate over millions of years.
They were all formed simultaneously in one great flood.
Poorly sourced, just complete utter made up nonsense.
[Voice] Hands are composed of non-living atoms.
I have a friend of mine who is in ATI,
and she said that she never learned math outside of fractions,
because her dad said,
"Well, you use fractions in baking and that's good enough."
[Lindsey] Through the Wisdom Booklets, through all the other ATI materials,
and every seminar that we went to,
more and more of my freedoms and my rights were getting taken away from me.
What I could wear, what I could watch, what I could listen to.
It really became a world of all the things I couldn't do.
[Bill Gothard] When a young person listens to a rock song, even a Christian rock,
they give Satan a little square in their soul.
[Voice] The characteristic offbeat in today's rock music
has been traced to the Satanic rituals in the jungles of West Africa.
[Brooke] Gothard had all these crazy rules.
He was just, kind of, this Wizard of Oz-like head,
looming over the whole audience
being like "God thinks you should homeschool your children,"
and the, you know, "rock beat is evil."
I threw away all of my evil Amy Grant CDs.
♪ Baby, baby, the stars are shining for you ♪
♪ Be a winner at the game of Life ♪
[Heather] The game of Life, you could not have the game of Life.
There was not enough seats in that car to fill your quiver.
They had their own games.
This is the Commands of Christ board game, which is super fun and traumatic.
Here you have the venomous pit of bitterness,
the torture pit of temporal values, and then the miry pit of moral impurity.
There's temptation to be bitter, and then temptation to lust, temptation to worry.
Temptation to worry. How do you not worry about that? (laughs)
They set you up for failure.
Good afternoon, Piglet. If it is a good afternoon.
Some people couldn't have Winnie the Pooh.
- Why? - Because Eeyore glorified depression.
(Eeyore sighs)
And Barbie dolls were just harlots.
[Derick] I've asked Jill about the cabbage patch thing.
I don't remember if I fully understood.
I don't know if I fully ever understood.
We were never allowed to have 'em, so (laughs)
[Brooke] Bill Gothard taught that Xavier Roberts,
the creator of Cabbage Patch dolls, was a warlock.
That every cabbage patch doll comes off of the factory line,
he, like, en-curses it with a demon.
[Tara] I remember going to conferences and coming home, and feeling so afraid.
This stuffed animal has a tag on it that says the word magic.
- I'm bringing evil into my family's home. - Devil worship.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
[Michelle] And live happily ever after. Okay, girls, let's go to bed.
Goodnight girls, I love you.
The way that my aunt is so soft spoken, meek and mild,
and just really quiet spirit
- Oh, it drives me nuts. - And then Stop.
The voice is a very intentional, trained thing.
It's part of what we were instructed to do.
- She infantilizes herself on purpose. - She used to be a cheerleader.
I know the woman can yell, and she does not yell anymore.
Listen, the first time I say it, what is it? You obey it.
[Heather] They want young, innocent, sweet girls, not women.
[Jill] My parents wanted all the girls to wear dresses, like all the time.
[Amy] We got pilgrim collars going on, big pilgrim collars, and big skirts.
Our goal is to draw attention to our countenance,
and that helps us to decide what things we wear.
[Chad] You had to wear your hair a certain way to frame your face.
[Lindsey] At one point, Bill Gothard, he took me aside,
because he seemed frustrated that my hair wasn't curly enough.
That it just, needed more Godly "umph."
[Jill] My dad likes long hair, and so we've tried to keep our hair long.
[Lindsey] I would curl my hair ad nauseam. I felt that I had to do this all the time.
We're gonna be talking about clothing. Why is this such an area of contention?
The problem is that men have a problem with their eyes.
The solution is to avoid eye traps.
The shorter the skirt, the more vicious the trap.
[Brooke] In the Wisdom Booklet, there's these drawings of women,
and they're wearing various different outfits.
[Voice] Can you identify the eye traps in these pictures?
(curious music)
[Brooke] The assignment is to figure out what's slutty about each woman's outfit.
And so you circle, "Oh, it's the lace right here.
Oh, it's the mid-calf length skirt."
Instead of learning math, you're learning slut shaming.
[Josh Duggar] What is Joy doing right now?
She's covering up the immodest dress.
[Jana] If we're walking past a girl that is immodestly dressed,
they'll call out Nike,
and all the boys will immediately put their heads down, and just walk past.
[Voice] The winking eye. Those who fall to her whoredom
are stripped of resources and vibrancy of life.
You are on display for everyone.
[Woman] You could be a trap for anyone, so if the pastor is molesting you,
it's probably because he's attracted to the young woman you're becoming,
and it's your fault for seducing him.
[Heather] Don't have older brothers change girl babies,
because if you have an older brother change a girl baby,
he'll know what female anatomy looks like,
and he'll be tempted to touch it.
[Brooke] There's a very prepubescent sexual subtext
that I think runs throughout Gothard's teachings,
and I think runs throughout the Wisdom Booklet.
[Voice] Fornicator, lust, lechery, perversion. The pubic louse.
[Brooke] It's almost as if there's this fear of burgeoning sexuality,
and so it must be completely repressed, controlled, ignored,
and refused at all costs.
This repression definitely feeds into a hypersexuality.
[Voice] Adulterer, prostitution, homosexuality, incest.
Don't think about your sister's boobs.
What are you gonna do, think about your sister's boobs?
(tense music continues)
[Bill Gothard] The one who made pornography popular in America
has done more damage in America than a hundred Hitlers.
A lot of these newspaper inserts are pornography.
Romance novels are like pornography.
We said, "You know what, kids, we think there's a lot of things in our home,
DVDs and all kinds of, you know, books and all kinds of stuff
that we don't feel like are pleasing the Lord." I said, "Would you guys help us?"
[Amy] So, my family had a huge bonfire where they burned everything Disney,
and everything, everything, literally everything that was worldly.
[Chad] I've heard of Bill Gothard being personally asked
to cleanse people's houses for them. That meant going room to room,
praying that any demonic influence that had ever been in there
would be cleansed by the power of Jesus Christ.
If we allow a hole in our umbrella, Satan will come in, and will attack our family.
It was guaranteed destruction, you know, or something like that.
And, so, as like a young imaginative kid,
I'm like, "Oh my God," you know, "I'm gonna be destroyed."
[Floyd] Fear was a a huge component of what they pushed through the seminar
and through the materials.
♪ Why should I not be put in hell ♪
♪ To suffer for all time? ♪♪
[Lara] In IBLP, you're at high alert all the time digging into everything,
making sure you're not doing, or thinking,
or feeling anything that's going to get you sent to hell,
and hell was very vivid for us. It was not an abstract concept.
I would dream about being burned alive, because I had thought,
"Ugh, I really hate my brother today."
And I thought (laughs), "Oh, no, going to hell again."
I realized at a young age that I was a sinner.
I have done so many bad deeds, I've sinned against God,
and I cannot save myself from my sins.
[Woman] Within this community, critical thinking is turned on yourself.
So, you end up, kind of, cannibalizing your self-confidence
with over analyzing, "Am I doing it right?"
Rather than criticizing the system as a whole.
If you are so preoccupied with self-examination,
you're not gonna have enough energy to challenge the system itself.
(suspicious music)
[Jim Bob] Man has his role, woman has her role,
and everyone will just be happy if they stick to those two things.
Every single one of us will see life through our particular spiritual gift.
[Chad] You were taught you had a spiritual gift,
and you were supposed to determine what your spiritual gift was,
and that spiritual gift was to be used for the ministry.
[Brooke] Really and truly, everyone's a prophet or a mercy.
It's kind of a funny little type-casting,
and prophets have carte blanche to be as big of jerks as they want,
and mercies are just supposed to take it.
And then, of course, all the men are prophets,
and all the women are mercies. (laughs)
[Bill Gothard] The gift of mercy.
They have an amazing capacity to share the burdens of others.
They take them up, they assume them, they just kind of collect burdens.
[Interviewer] Do you remember what your spiritual gift was?
(laughs) Yes, mercy giver.
(toddler fussing)
[Bill Gothard] The older ones must be trained,
because the older ones take care of the younger ones.
[Jill] In my family, usually the older kids helped take care of the younger kids.
We had buddy pairs, and I had a buddy team.
[Jen] There's a lot of parentification within the Quiverfull movement.
Just the sheer number of children, it is impossible to parent all of them,
and they usually have the older children, the daughters,
- take care of the younger kids. - I think my experience of parentification
is still one of my biggest traumas from this world that I'm still working through.
My upbringing really looked a lot like the early years of the Duggars.
(suspicious music continues)
I grew up in a Quiverfull family. I'm the oldest of nine.
I helped raise approximately five of my younger siblings.
I was my sibling's surrogate mom. I had been at the birth,
and done night duty, and done feedings, and I was so tired, so tired all the time.
[Michelle] When the baby is born, it's my buddy until it's weaned,
and then from there it goes to the other buddy,
whoever's turn it is to get a buddy.
[Tia] To a child who is 11 years old raising a baby,
and they just saw on TV it touted it as the buddy system,
and nobody said, "Is anybody checking to see if that 11 year old had some needs?
That maybe she shouldn't have the baby in the bed with her?
That maybe she needs school?"
I cannot emphasize enough how hurtful that is.
[Jill] Smile, and have a pleasant look on your face
so you don't look like you're mad or something.
(strings humming) [Lara] When I was watching the Duggars,
the attitudes of the children are what I noticed right off the bat.
My heart broke for them, because they were so calm,
and they were so peaceful and well-behaved,
and I knew what it took to get there.
(audience applauding)
[Bill Ligon] So, if I had someone who would loan me a little boy,
I would show you how to spank a boy, and bless him at the same time right now.
And you got one coming? Well, bring him around here, and bring him on up here.
(applause)
- Hi son, what's your name? - [Jason] Jason.
Jason, wow, that's a fine name.
Well, Jason, I'm gonna pretend that I'm your dad for a moment, okay?
I want to tell you, Jason, you know, that daddy is not pleased
with the way you've acted today, and you know it's wrong, right?
- [Jason] Yes sir. - And, so, I'm gonna spank you.
So, lean over here right now.
Now, Jason, you're a fine boy. You're gonna grow up to be an outstanding man.
God's hand is on your life son.
(audience laughing)
Now, okay, let's see. You understand? Did you understand now?
- Yes, sir. - Okay, well, give daddy a hug.
I don't think you put yourself into that hug, son,
so let's spank a little more.
(audience laughing)
Let's see if we can get a good hug out of this. Let's see, give daddy a hug.
Boy, oh wow, wow! (audience laughing)
[Chad] They believed in physical punishment for nearly everything.
It was a fear-based tactic, and it was very effective.
In my family, my mom was my primary abuser.
She would scream at us, she would threaten us,
she would beat us mercilessly.
At one point she beat me for an entire hour in a church bathroom
in an effort to "break my will," as she said.
Family friend happened to be there when the incident occurred, and she said,
"Oh, yes, and the whole time I was saying, 'please stop hurting that sweet boy.'"
And mom said, "Yes, but I had to break his will."
This was treated as a funny family story. Everybody laughed except me.
I'm not gonna let you disobey. What you need to do is honor.
[Jill] Having a voice about what you think and how you feel,
and being able to voice and say no about things
was stifled and not encouraged in the IBLP setting, in my family.
(bells ringing)
[Tara] The show is basically saying, perfect angel children exist,
but I didn't see calm, happy children. I saw broken spirits.
[Michelle] It is so sweet. It goes into all areas of their life,
and so the guys will help me bring this next one up.
Say it again.
Instant obedience to initial prompting of God's spirit.
Our eighth born just resisted every bit of training I tried to give him,
and when he was about 14 months old, I just didn't know what to do with him,
and he was really shaming his mother.
And I would spank that child all day long. And many mothers
[Lara] All children, if they were following the institute's guidelines,
you're spanked until you stop crying, which could be hours.
(solemn music)
In the institute, Michael and Debi Pearl's book "To Train Up a Child"
was the endorsed book by Gothard.
If that child is gonna have authority,
mother, you gotta let that man be the authority.
Punish him with the rod severely.
If he screams too hard with the first five, gets hysterical, wait.
You know, a little psychological terror is sometimes more effective than the pain.
Michael and Debi Pearl are some mother fuckers.
The rules, the principles, techniques
for training an animal and a human are the same.
[Tia] His goal is to help you spank your child with extreme measures
and not get in trouble with the police.
So, how you spank is just as important as what you spank with.
It can be a switch from a tree,
it can be a length of craft glue, the long glue stick, it can be PVC pipe.
The rod of reproof.
The real benefit of that is that when a child sees this neutral object
coming out of the drawer or whatever, it becomes like a policeman.
[Interviewer] Did you see your cousins being punished with rods?
They called it encouragement.
They literally said, "You need to come into the room,
and we need to give you some encouragement."
But it was in the sweetest tone ever of, like, "Do you need encouragement?"
"I think you need encouragement."
(tense music)
[Chad] I know that there was a particular style of child training
called blanket training.
You put the kid on a blanket, probably six-month old,
and you put something they want just outside of reach off the blanket,
and when they go to reach for it, you hit them,
and if they continue to reach for it, you hit them again.
The idea is you're breaking the rebellious spirit they are born with.
So, blanket training was also covered in Michelle Duggar's book.
[Michelle] I would focus on blanket training,
calling out, "Okay boys, it's blanket time. Oh, isn't this fun?"
"Come pick a toy so we can have blanket time."
And we're gonna practice, "obey mama."
Sit really still, and look at me with a big old smile.
Wanna see that smile now. No wiggles, be still.
(tense music continues)
[Woman] When you are told to not resist
when your parents are hitting you as a child, because it's for your own good,
when you believe that your body belongs to the church
and to the authorities that be,
it's absolutely designed to groom victims
to be ready for more predators later on as adults, as young adults.
Like, everything about it sets you up to be the perfect victim.
(tense music continues)
It's like Gothard franchised spiritual, physical, emotional, psychological abuse.
[Bill Gothard] The way to be free is to learn the wishes of your authority.
[Josh Pease] He figured out how to package it,
and then put it in all these different places that he never actually went.
It was so entrenched into the DNA of the message
that it went everywhere.
Gothard turned every father into a cult leader and every home into an island.
(tense music continues)
[Floyd] My father was very attracted to the patriarchal teachings of IBLP.
The control and protection that it would've afforded him
was exceptionally valuable to him,
especially as I would come to learn later that he was a predator.
When I was 12, he was convicted for a sexual assault against a minor.
So, it destroyed my idea of what a family was,
and the support that my mother received through IBLP
to stay with him, to continue, to bring him back into our home,
was deeply traumatic as well.
This kind of stuff was swept under the rug.
That's something that I experienced directly.
(breathing deeply)
When we met, I was very reserved and rigid, and she was the opposite of that,
and that's one of the reasons I fell in love with her originally.
(crowd clapping and cheering) [Tara] I met you when I was 18.
My entire drive, looking back, was to find my husband.
We're not just dating to have fun, and go to the movies.
We are on a schedule. We have to get this done.
We've got babies to make, and that's the entire focus and purpose.
[Anna] My family had known about the Duggar family for several years.
Then in 2006, when I was 17, and Josh was 18,
we met for the first time at a homeschool conference.
(tense music continues)
[Bill Gothard] Every one of you sons, every one of you daughters,
upgraded dating to courtship.
Courtship established the parents as the head of every relationship
between a young man and young woman in ATI.
The man would approach the woman's parents, ask for permission to court,
everything else from from there
was essentially handled like an arranged marriage.
[Derick and Jill] It's the Duggar Guide to Love.
[Jill] Today we're sharing the Duggar rules of side hugs, chaperones,
and saving your first kiss for marriage.
[Kristin] The idea of courtship
It's promoted as a way of guaranteeing sexual purity.
- [Josh Duggar] Anna, will you marry me? - Yes.
(laughing)
[Amy] I hear my uncle in the background go,
"So, who wants to be Josh and Anna's chaperone?"
So beautiful, oh, Anna!
[Amy] Yeah, and they're engaged at this point.
They're engaged. I literally was like,
don't you know how to act toward each other when no one's around?
[TLC Producer] Did you Google or YouTube how to kiss?
What's that?
[TLC Producer 2] Google or YouTube how to kiss.
[laughs] No, no, no, no. Do they have it on there?
(everyone laughing)
[Tia] You would save your kissing for the wedding.
You would save all experience for the one person that God had for you.
It really beautified purity culture.
It made it seem like it was this romantic wonderful concept.
I thought it'd be time to have a man-to-man talk with you.
- Oh. - About the birds and the bees.
[Tia] There was this CD. Jim Bob is giving it to Josh.
Definition of normal (beeping sound).
Yeah. Shh. (both laughing)
It's supposed to be a Kama Sutra for Christians. There's one position in it,
and instructions on how to give a good hand job, and be available at all times.
I think I kind of understand how it works.
- [Jim Bob] Yeah. - I think I learned that-
- [Jim Bob] It's kinda like Legos. - [Tia] In hindsight,
we know that Josh Duggar had already molested his sisters at this point.
He was already well acquainted with what was going on with sexuality,
and he'd already been through their farce of rehabilitation.
But when America saw that, it's a joke, it's a joke.
This doesn't have pictures or anything, but it's good.
- Aw, man, no, I'm joking. - That's good.
No, no, I got enough. I'll have a working model, right?
Yeah.
[Jessa] I have a feeling it's gonna be a very short engagement.
[Interviewer 2] Why is that?
Um, I don't think Josh wants to wait. [laughs]
[Tia] In this culture, you are not really allowed
to say no to who shows up and says they want you.
If a man says he wants you, then he's God's man for you,
and you have to learn how to adjust your feelings and thoughts around that.
So, by the time I was an 18 year old woman,
I had fully expected to just be nothing more than a submissive wife and mother.
And then I met somebody at church.
I didn't have instant attraction to this person.
I didn't feel safe with this person,
but I had spent my lifetime praying for the man
God was going to bring me to marry.
(organ music)
And, so, I bent my will around this idea.
(upbeat music)
We're having the wedding today.
[Michael] The way God ordained it all, Josh becomes the authority at the wedding.
You know, he becomes her authority, not me.
And that's the way God designed the transfer of authority.
[Brooke] Women cannot be in authority over themselves.
They have to have a male authority figure over them.
The idea is that you're under the total authority of your father
until he transfers that authority over to your husband on your wedding day.
[Officiant] Anna, placing yourself under the leadership of Joshua,
submitting to his authority, following his direction through Christ in your lives.
Also, do both of you commit to trust God with the size of your family?
- We do. - We do.
[Officiant] You may kiss your bride.
[Tia] We had a beautiful wedding.
(wedding goers clapping)
My parents gave me the wedding of my dreams.
I was on cloud nine. I thought I was starting my fairytale.
(wedding goers cheering)
[Officiant] I would like to introduce to you, Mr. And Mrs. Joshua James Duggar.
(crowd cheering and applauding)
[Dr. Edwin] This is Dr. Edwin. Love involves close bodily contact
and the pleasure of seeing, touching and enjoying with all the senses.
[Crew Member 1] We're getting this last shot,
which should be the last shot in the show, them walking to the hotel room.
(upbeat music)
[Josh Duggar] Goodbye.
(door slams)
I had successfully remained pure. I had followed all of the rules,
and I had spent the engagement fending off physical advances
in trying to save myself for the wedding night.
On my wedding night I was raped three times,
and after that found out I was pregnant.
Why is marriage like this? Is this like this for everybody?
Is love supposed to hurt this much?
I didn't have any idea what was normal or natural. I'd had no sex education.
I was 19, and I was totally in shock. I had an abusive husband.
Had my first baby at 20. My fifth baby was born when I was 30.
I trusted my Gothard mentors,
because I felt I could trust a mother of 10 whose children all sat in a row,
and clearly had order and structure.
The answers I got back were,
"These are your duties, these are your responsibilities."
- [Levings] Blow, blow, blow - [Tia] Blow, baby.
(child blowing) (all cheering)
[Tia] If you do better at being a wife,
you will solve the problems of your marriage.
I needed my baby to sleep through the night,
because if my baby cried at night, and my husband didn't sleep,
there was going to be violence.
Michael Pearl talks about child spanking.
A careful reader will realize there is no age limit to spanking.
Children in homeschooling, fundamentalist families
are spanked all the way up into adulthood,
and that includes older daughters, and that includes wives.
And this is something the fundamentalist husbands do to their wives.
For example, if you forget to say, yes sir,
or my lord, when you're talking to your husband, then there's a consequence.
There's an implement that's agreed upon as part of the contract,
a domestic discipline contract.
There are rules for whether or not you're allowed to cry.
If there's going to involve what they call corner time, where you go sit in a corner,
if there will be sex afterward or not
as part of the restoration of the relationship.
No matter how old you are, the whole point is inflict pain
until you have the submissive confession that the oppressor wants.
When the show first premiered,
I instantly recognized their belief pattern as my own.
My first thought was, "Oh my God,
are they really gonna show America what my life is like?
What's America gonna say when they find out how these people live?"
What actually happened is nothing like that.
It was heavily produced, very shined up.
The audacity of Jim Bob Duggar to say,
"I've got my family under so much control."
They were that secure they could keep their secrets with a camera crew,
and that their kids were not gonna betray the truth.
I cannot believe that he got away with that,
and that it was a hit show for as long as it was.
[Megyn] Why would a family with such a painful secret launch a reality TV show?
It was a very difficult situation.
But as we've talked to other parents and different ones since then,
a lot of families have said
that they've had similar things happen in their families, and
[Heather] Nobody in my circle was surprised
when the allegations against Josh came out.
It was so prevalent that nobody was shocked.
That's what happens, brothers do that.
[Jill] We were hiding from paparazzi,
and it's, like, everybody's in this room, this family meeting.
My dad's PR guy would be there as well.
- [Producer] And who was that? - Chad Gallagher.
[Jill] Chad worked with Mike Huckabee as well.
[Derick] He was an advocate to the extent
that it represented Jim Bob's goals financially.
[Jill] So, Chad was the one who was setting up the Megyn Kelly thing
to try and get it to where TLC would be cool with moving forward with this show.
You are going on the record as being two of Josh's victims.
As victims we have to come out and speak. This is something we chose to do.
Nobody asked us to do this. Jessa and I were talking
[Danielle] The survivors of the abuse go on the Megyn Kelly show,
and are kind of forced to kind of relive that trauma,
and kind of downplay it.
[Jill] In hindsight, I wouldn't have done the Megyn Kelly stuff.
I felt like I was in a place again of bearing the burden and the weight of just
(thickly) Um Even though you volunteer, it's, like, you feel obligated to help.
[Megyn] How old were you when Josh inappropriately touched you?
I was 12.
I do wanna speak up in his defense
against people who are calling him a child molester,
or a pedophile, or a rapist some people are saying.
I'm, like, that is so overboard and a lie, really.
[Derick] The whole Megyn Kelly thing, I would not call it voluntary.
Basically being called on to carry out a suicide mission.
You're gonna destroy yourself, but we need you to take the fall
so that you can carry the show forward, because the show cannot fail.
And they were gonna do whatever they could to get the return on their investment.
If that meant collateral damage, that meant collateral damage.
And in our case, you know, it's very mild compared to what happens to some.
[Jessa] I know so many girls go through things that are way worse.
So, for me, I'm sad, because this is my older brother who I love a lot,
and I had to make that choice to forgive him, you know.
It wasn't something that somebody forced, like, "Oh, you need to do this,"
you know, it was like, you have to make that decision for yourself.
[Megyn] Did you fight?
- [Jill] (laughs) No. - [Jessa] No. Girls were sleeping.
We didn't know about it until he went and confessed it to my parents,
- and they shared it with us. No. - Neither one of you
No, none of the victims were aware of what happened.
[Amy] It did feel a little scripted.
It felt like it was maybe a little bit forced.
Jill has strength and tenacity.
She is not one to just keep quiet and silent,
and so she's the one that really did something about Josh
and hit him the night that he tried to do something to her.
(tense music continues)
[Andrew] As a father of three little girls,
this was a brutal hour of television to watch.
[Reporter 5] While there's been a lot of backlash,
lots of people are also coming to his defense,
mostly saying everyone makes mistakes.
[Reporter 6] Their best pal, Mike Huckabee, came to their defense a well.
[Civilian] When the Duggars came out, and their son had molested their child,
you more or less said that you felt sorry for their parents.
[Mike] Ma'am, let me tell you something.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
You don't know that family and I do.
(group clapping) You're done.
[Reporter 7] For months the family presented a united front.
Sisters Jessa and Jill defending their brother on Fox News.
But in the wake of the shocking news, TLC canceled their popular show.
Like, it didn't save everything. It wasn't enough.
Yeah.
[Derick] Jim Bob's clawing to get the show back as quick as possible.
TLC was like, well we can't focus on you and your wife
or any of the kids in the home,
'cause that's too close to ground zero, basically.
But we're gonna focus on the older kids, mostly the ones who are outta the house.
Jill, and Jessa, and their families.
We're gonna name it "Jill and Jessa: Counting On".
[Announcer 2] Counting On, premieres Tuesday, March 15th at nine on TLC.
We were having all these talks about this promo shoot coming up.
We're being pressured to come back.
I didn't want to, but at the same time, I've never said no to my family before.
It's this whole, like, umbrellas of authority thing. That was ingrained in me.
I felt like if I said no, I am not obeying my parents,
and bad things are gonna happen to me. (laughs)
(tense music continues)
IBLP and the teachings draw in people like my dad,
who want this control. It can foster this cult-like environment.
I absolutely think that people would be drawn to that.
[Tia] Bill Gothard, Jim Bob Duggar, these are all feathers of a kind,
with a slightly different outward presentation.
[Lindsey] This was my actual life that these people fucked with.
Along with the Duggars.
[Jill] I said, "We cannot do what you're asking us to do."
Basically, they're like (baby crying)
Well, you have to.
[Heather] I don't think our parents realized
that anything terrible was happening at these training centers.
(tense music continues)
The Gothard teachings take on more power and more power.
[Josh Pease] Gothard starts building these different training centers
all over the world.
[Chad] It was near slave labor
out of young people that he made work at his training centers.
He built that empire off our backs.
[Lara] They would lock you in the prayer room for hours up to days, up to weeks.
[Jill] You have to obey.
Are we gonna get off the plane, and, like, they're gonna arrest us?
[Danielle] I look at that kind of a thing as just further exploitation of the girls.
I didn't know how to say, "I don't want you in my bed."
Whatever was repressed inside of Gothard was spilling out.
Bill never married, and he never had any children.
He pointed at me, and he said, "Don't let this one go."
[Josh Pease] IBLP modeling the exact opposite
of everything that it claims to represent.
The institute had a tremendous amount of money,
and if you could get rid of Bill Gothard,
somebody who was left gets control of all of that cash.
[Jill] You had to sign another deal with my dad. It would be, like, forever.
(tense music continues)