In light of the shocking new arrest on child pornography charges, one could be forgiven for forgetting Josh Duggar has faced some other scandals in recent years.
There was the Ashley Madison leak that revealed him as a cheater, some tax troubles… but it got WAY worse than that.
In 2015 an old police report surfaced in which the reality star was accused of molesting young girls, including some of his sisters and their friends, while they slept. He was only 12 years old when the abuse started, and he was never prosecuted. Instead he went to a Christian rehab center.
Eventually he made a public apology admitting everything, saying the reason a police report was filed was that he confessed to his parents, who walked him through turning himself in — and that he “sought forgiveness.” Actually pretty hard to ever forget that one…
Related: Duggar Family Responds To Josh’s Child Porn Charges
Later in life, he was also accused of rape.
For those who missed this legal drama, a porn star who went by Danica Dillon filed a lawsuit claiming the 19 Kids And Counting black sheep had approached her at a strip club where she was dancing and offered her money to sleep with him. But the encounter which began as consensual quickly turned into a brutal assault as he refused to use protection and then held her down and choked her despite her begging him to stop:
“He was manhandling me, basically tossing me around like I was a rag doll. It was very traumatic. I’ve had rough sex before, but this was terrifying.”
Ultimately she had to drop the suit after Duggar provided Uber receipts showing he was in another city at the time of the alleged encounter.
But in the wake of these most recent charges, folks are being less dismissive of the former adult entertainer, whose real name is Ashley Johnston (née Lewis). DailyMail.com interviewed the now 34-year-old about her take on the child porn charges, and she had a strong one! She began:
“I’m not shocked by it. I’m not shocked in the least. He’s been a disgusting man his entire young adult life.”
She added:
“Child molestation sits very deep in my soul. I think it is the worst crime you can commit to anybody. I was molested when I was a child, and nothing happened to the person that hurt me.”
She pointed out that Josh seemed to get away scot free despite his very public scandals as well:
“I know who he his, millions of people have read who he is, but he’s never faced any kind of repercussion, any kind of justice.”
So how did he beat her lawsuit? She has her own take on that matter, telling the outlet his “proof” shouldn’t have held up at all:
“There were Uber receipts, they were trying to use that as evidence he could have been nowhere near me. But everyone knows I could get an Uber for Tom, Harry, Paul, Frank, to take an Uber in New York 10 blocks down the street.”
She also described her own lawyer as far inferior to the legal team paid for by all that TV money:
“One of my friends was my attorney, I knew this guy personally. I didn’t have the income to take on TLC or the Duggar family… I am just one individual person that cannot take on an entire team, and that sucks in the justice system so bad.”
Hmm. Did she actually get a raw deal there? We never did hear her side of this.
As she puts it, it was just a bit early for the trend of society actually listening to women…
“There’s nothing you can do in that situation, at least then. Then the Me Too movement was not around. It was: I was a porn star, I was an escort, I deserved it. And there were so many stories after I had come out, bashing me and hurting me.”
She says she got attacked by so many defending Josh, which is CRAZY considering what had already been proven about him.
“I had so many people emailing me, threatening me, telling me I deserved to die because I outed someone ‘of good standing’. It’s unspeakable how people like the Duggars can just get away with whatever they want because they have the money or they know the right people.”
“Good standing.” Wow.
She wasn’t shy about sharing her negative opinion of Josh’s wife, Anna Duggar, either. Anna stayed through the rape accusation, the child molestation revelation, and straight through to the child porn arrest. She is, in fact, currently pregnant with their seventh child.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2VkmVrHsoh/
Ashley bashed what she sees as complicity, saying:
“It’s disgusting that you know that he’s a predator, you know he was inappropriate with children before, and yet you continue to give him more children. You continue to put your children’s lives at risk. I don’t understand it, I will never understand it.”
Hear, hear. She continued:
“There’s something so sick and twisted for a man to be accused of child pornography and to be sat there smiling and his wife saying ‘It’s ok, we’re going to be ok.’ Because it’s not ok. It’s not ok for you, it’s not ok for those kids. The child pornography that he [is accused of] watching, all of those hundreds of kids that are being abused in ways we’ll never know.”
Can’t argue with that. What do YOU think of Ashley’s takes — and her previous accusation — in light of the new charges??
[Image via Anna Duggar/Ashley Johnston/Instagram.]