[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
Zero visitors and counting?
Josh Duggar spent his 34th birthday behind bars, his first since being convicted on child pornography charges back in December. As he continues to await sentencing he has very little positive to look forward to — and even his birthday wasn’t one of those things as it was by all accounts a very lonely affair.
According to an inside source, so to speak, spilling to The Sun, the jail he’s in “doesn’t do anything special for inmate birthdays.” So no cake in the lounge for the child sex offenders!
Related: The Story Of The ‘Most Offensive’ Thing Josh Is Accused Of Downloading
In all seriousness, Josh is still, so far as we are aware, stuck in solitary confinement “for his own safety” — as fellow inmates tend to look down on child sex criminals as much as the rest of us do. So no one is wishing him a very special day. No one.
It’s an even worse time than usual to be an inmate at times like this, the insider explains:
“There are no visits in-person right now because of Covid. Loved ones can set up video chats.”
We’ve heard Josh’s wife Anna Duggar is standing by his side and communicating with him often. From December 10 to January 2, she called him over 100 times, according to the outlet’s previous reporting! Wow! (COVID protocols mean she won’t be seeing him again until the sentencing.)
Despite her devotion, she isn’t making any more public showings of support. Neither she nor anyone else in Josh’s family, despite most of them being active on social media, has posted any well-wishes to their brother for his birthday. Not even Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar are willing to stick their necks out in public anymore. Maybe that’s because of how bad a hit their reputation has already taken over the course of his trial and beyond?
Related: Money Troubles?! Duggars Reportedly Selling Off Arkansas Land!
It was made shockingly clear in recent unsealed transcripts how hard Jim Bob fought to keep all of the child molestation admissions from being repeated in the trial. And how much he seemingly pushed to keep it all buried long before then as well.
As we reported on Thursday, the full transcript of family friend Bobye Holt‘s testimony at a pretrial hearing was obtained by The Sun, and it contains just the most horrifying details.
Not only does it point to years of molestation of children both related to Josh and not — four young daughters of the Holts were among the victims, according to what Bobye claims Josh told them — it also reveals things we wish we could unlearn.
For instance, Josh described — per Bobye’s account — molesting her 4-year-old daughter to her:
“[Josh] explained that Jane Doe 4 was sitting on his lap during Bible time and he touched her inappropriately. He said it happened that day. On that date, he told us that he touched her vaginal area… When she was sitting on his lap he put his hand under her pantaloons and under her panties.”
Not only that, Josh apparently only confessed some of what he did because months after the earlier confessions, after the faith-based counseling that was supposed to help, one young girl woke up and “fought him off” when he tried to molest her.
“He said that he went to [Jane Doe 1] as she was sleeping and that he was going up underneath her blankets to start to touch her and that she woke up and hit him.”
This was in 2005, after the initial round of confessions — and Bobye says Jim Bob and Michelle “said they didn’t want to hear it” at that point.
In his own testimony, Jim Bob tried to make it sound like he and his family had done the right thing, saying:
“We did even take Josh to the Arkansas State Police on the recommendation of Jim Holt. … Josh confessed everything to Arkansas State Police.”
On the recommendation of the victims’ father? How virtuous of Josh. Oh, btw, that whole thing about Josh confessing everything to the Arkansas State Police?
That also seems to have been a lie. The trooper was a family friend, one Joseph Truman Hutchens, and he later claimed all he was told was that Josh had been inappropriate with one of his sisters. Hutchens did not file any official report, only giving Josh “a stern talk” about boundaries. However, he said later he would have acted differently if he’d understood there were multiple victims, both family and not, including much, much younger ones at that.
Oh, btw — Trooper Hutchens? You know, Jim Bob’s buddy? Just four years after the incident with Josh, that guy also went to prison on child pornography charges! For real! That’s a pretty damn big coincidence, isn’t it??
Anyway. Hutchens is serving a 56-year sentence tantamount to life in prison. Josh reportedly faces up to 40 years if he’s given maximum sentences to be served consecutively. Whatever keeps him away from children forever. The sentencing is coming up on April 5 — here’s hoping, right? We’ll just call it a birthday present to the rest of the world.
[Image via Anna Duggar/Duggar Family/Instagram/A&E/YouTube/Washington County Sheriffs Office.]
Related Posts
