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Josh Duggar Found Guilty Of Receiving & Possessing Child Pornography

Josh Duggar dismiss charges

A jury in Fayetteville, Arkansas has convicted former reality TV star Josh Duggar of downloading and possessing child pornography after a high-profile federal trial in the city.

The jury of his peers found the 33-year-old man guilty of one count each of receiving and possessing child pornography in their decision, which was announced on Thursday morning.

Josh now faces up to 20 years and prison and a possible fine as high as $250,000 for each of those counts. He’ll be sentenced by a federal judge at a later date.

Related: Josh’s Cousin Prays For ‘Justice For The Children’ As His Child Porn Trial Continues

As we’ve been reporting throughout the trial, which lasted more than week, a Little Rock police detective discovered child porn files were being shared by a computer traced back to the used car dealership where Josh worked in the city of Springdale back in 2019. Federal agents later testified that the former reality TV star had downloaded multiple images depicting the sexual abuse of children, including toddlers, and used a high-level virtual “partition” on his work computer to shield access to the images from anyone else.

Duggar’s attorney, Justin Gelfand, had argued that the computer in question was a shared computer used at the car dealership office, and somebody else must have downloaded and seen the images instead of Josh. A jury wasn’t convinced by that claim, and on Thursday morning found the disgraced former 19 Kids and Counting star guilty.

Josh Duggar has been arrested and booked on child pornography charges.
Josh starred on the popular TLC reality TV show along with the rest of his family until it was canceled in 2015. / (c) TLC/YouTube

Along with the current-day allegations upon which he was convicted, Josh had also previously admitted to allegedly molesting four girls. A longtime family friend testified that the man told her about the abuse, which reportedly began when Josh was just 12 years old. Duggar later came clean about what he termed at the time to be a “pornography addiction,” as well as for alleged actions related to cheating on his wife, Anna. The family’s reality TV show was canceled in 2015 following further revelations that Josh had allegedly molested four of his sisters and a babysitter.

Authorities began investigating that abuse back in 2006, but later determined that the statute of limitations had passed on filing possible charges there. Still, the old abuse allegations were introduced as part of this trial, after the presiding judge ruled that they could be admissible as evidence in the newly-concluded case.

Related: Prosecutors Reveal Disgusting Details About Josh’s Apparent Online Actions — OMG

Josh’s father, Jim Bob, has also had a rough go of it in this instance. He was admonished by the judge presiding over this case last week after he found Jim Bob’s early testimony denying knowledge of Josh’s prior molestation allegations to be “not credible.”

Jim Bob is currently running in a special election for a vacant state Senate seat in Arkansas. Hopefully the voters will take all this into account when it comes time to cast their ballots…

Josh’s sentencing date has not yet been publicly announced. We’ll update you with that information when it becomes available.

[Image via Washington County Sheriff’s Department]

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Dec 09, 2021 08:50am PDT