Widely reviled former reality star Josh Duggar was arrested on child porn charges this week.
The charges may not be a surprise, given his history, but they are nonetheless disgusting.
As the depraved monster awaits his hearing next week, fans are wondering how all of the pieces fit together.
And for that matter ... if he's guilty, what was going through Josh's mind to make him do this?
On Thursday, April 29, Josh Duggar was arrested for receiving and possessing child pornography.
The father of six allegedly downloaded material depicting the sexual abuse of children under the age of 12.
He is accused of doing so in May of 2019, nearly two years before the arrest.
The day after his arrest, Josh appeared in court on Friday, April 30, via video conference.
He pleaded not guilty to the charges of receiving and possessing child porn.
If Josh is convicted, he could face a total of 40 years in prison and a hefty six-figure fine.
Josh is behind bars because he is being held without bail.
There is a detention hearing on May 5 that may determine Josh's whereabouts before and during the trial.
Currently, the trial is scheduled to begin on July 6.
Unlike in the past, Jim Bob and Michelle were not able to cover for their son.
For the first time, Josh appears to be facing legal consequences for his alleged wrongdoings.
Powerless to hide him from justice, the family can only release a terse public comment.
Jim Bob and Michelle released a statement on Friday after Josh's charges were made public.
“We appreciate your continued prayers for our family at this time,” the notorious cult members began.
They could not deny that “the accusations brought against Joshua today are very serious."
"It is our prayer that the truth, no matter what it is, will come to light," the Duggar parents claimed.
"And," their statement continued, "that this will all be resolved in a timely manner."
Jim Bob and Michelle concluded: "We love Josh and Anna and continue to pray for their family.”
Fans could not help but notice the suspicious timing of all of this.
After all, the arrest came such a short time after Anna Duggar's pregnancy announcement.
For the record, many fans were already concerned that Josh was going to have another girl under his roof before this arrest.
To understand what happened, we have to first go back to the beginning.
When he was just a teenager, Josh molested multiple very little girls.
Several of them were his own sisters.
Jim Bob and Michelle, piece by piece, assembled the perfect stalking ground for a young sexual predator.
They then gave birth to Josh.
Here is how all of that fit together:
The Duggars, their cult, and many fellow fundamentalists believe in what's called "purity culture."
This toxic idea holds the idea that sex is in some way immoral, unclean, or unbecoming.
It causes people (especially women) to imagine that sexual thoughts, activities, or even basic knowledge can taint them.
Why does this environment make the ideal stalking ground for a predator who targets young girls?
Because no one has the language or understanding to describe what has been happening to them.
Additionally, feelings of shame at what has happened and fear of punishment if they come forward can keep victims silenced.
That is not the only thing that made the Duggar home an alarmingly safe place for Josh to prey upon his little sisters.
A large family, reliant upon siblings looking after each other, can give a predator opportunities to avoid detection.
But a fundamentalist cult, unwilling to be part of actual society, can protect them when they're caught.
That is exactly what happened, of course.
Jim Bob forced Josh into faith-based, unlicensed "therapy" within the cult.
That way, neither authorities nor the public had any knowledge of Josh's crimes for many years.
Why cover for his son? First and foremost, Jim Bob is an ambitious man and did not want the scandal.
He also would not want to embarrass the cult to which he belongs or draw unwanted outside attention to it in this context.
Finally, it may be that he genuinely, but incorrectly, believed that a faith counselor and shaming could "fix" Josh.
This again goes back tot he core ideas of purity culture, in which sex as a whole is "unclean" outside of specific circumstances.
Josh's activities weren't seen as a monster abusing little children, but as a man straying from the cult's beliefs and from God.
It was perceived that the Duggars would later view Josh cheating and viewing (adult) porn as the same thing happening again.
The story of Josh's crimes against these girls only came out, ultimately, several years ago.
The public outcry forced TLC to cancel 19 Kids and Counting.
Fans were heartbroken and disgusted, by his deeds and by the cover-up.
Jim Bob had used the show to raise money and fame to give himself a platform to push his agenda.
This means that he directly profited from keeping Josh's crimes a secret.
In his mind, this likely meant that the coverup was justified, if not divinely mandated.
At the time, John-David Duggar characterized Josh's scandal as the work of the devil.
This was not a simple "the devil made him do it" defense of his brother.
John-David was suggesting that satanic powers were trying to ruin his family ... by exposing Josh's crimes.
One has to question the beliefs of a cult whose most hated enemy strikes by exposing sex crimes against children.
However, this was not the end of it.
As we mentioned and of course reported, Josh confessed to cheating on Anna, his wife at the time of the scandal.
Fast forward past Josh's Ashley Madison cheating and (adult) porn scandals, and we get to late autumn in 2019.
At that time, rumors that "the FBI" had "raided the Duggar compound" in Arkansas began to swirl.
The truth turned out to be a little less dramatic ... at the time.
Homeland Security, it turned out, had been in the area -- something that they did not deny.
It was immediately speculated that it could be in some way related to Josh Duggar's sordid history.
Though it now seems that the reason was exactly what we were all thinking, most wrote it off as some sort of complicated financial crime.
At the time, the Duggar family put out a statement claiming that none of it was true.
They also insisted that none of them were the targets of an investigation.
Given that this was mere months after Josh allegedly received child porn ... that denial sort of falls flat now.
Many people are wondering what exactly would make someone like Josh prey upon children.
In 2015, some mistakenly believed that this was simply (very unhealthy, predatory) exploration of a 14-year-old with no sex ed or any kind of healthy outlet.
Clearly, that is not the case for a man in his thirties who is arrested for downloading the sexual abuse of preteen children.
As far as the larger medical and psychiatric community can tell, pedophilia -- adults attracted to minors -- have complicated causes.
The question of whether it's "nature or nurture" can likely be answered by "both."
But one way or the other, human instincts to protect children get blurred with human instincts for sexual desire.
This should not be confused with a creepy older dude who wants to bone high school girls (or "barely legal") women.
That's about power dynamics and a whole different type of predation ... and is a whole other story. Ugh, people can be so gross.
Of course, someone being unfortunate enough to find themselves attracted to little kids doesn't always mean that they would act on it.
Experts say that most of the adult men who actually prey on children are simply sadists who want a victim.
These men see children as "convenient targets."
In contrast, it's believed (but frankly needs further study) that there may be men "like Josh" who have never touched a child.
That's because, unlike Josh, they are people who either lacked the opportunity to molest -- or didn't want to ruin a child's life.
Which means that Josh is a man who prioritizes his own sick, twisted desires over the safety of little girls.
He has now demonstrated this more than once.
The reason that child porn is (and must be) criminalized is that it is the footage of a child's life being ruined.
Josh is accused of downloading porn of a child under the age of 12 being sexually abused.
It's gross that he'd want to possess or view that kind of material. It's evil that he'd seek and acquire it.
It's possible that Josh would have different desires today, or at least make different choices about those desires, if he'd had proper counseling as a teen.
Instead he was shamed, given a faith-based "rehab" treatment, and had his crimes covered, his victims forced to accept and forgive him.
Josh's choices as an adult may have gotten him arrested, but Jim Bob's decisions are what guaranteed all of this.
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