Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Cult Behind Josh Duggar

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

In Part Two, we continue to discuss Josh Duggar, and the Christian Dominionist cult that hid his crimes. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's Blanket Training My Baby? No, that's a horrible way to introduce your show. Thank God Sophie's not here. We have been talking, this is behind the bastards podcast, Bad People, Part Two, Duggar episodes. Not Blanket Training My Cats, but it turns out cats are incapable of learning things. That would have been a great slogan for Got Hard and ATI would have been training your babies. We have the Blanket Answers.

We have the Blanket Answers. Yeah, the Blanket Abusive, I don't know. There's not great jokes to tell about. There's, yeah. A profoundly abusive cult. Sean, back again to finish our two-parter on the Duggars and hopefully finish talking shit about Ted Wheeler, who's a bad mare and who got tear gassed for the fucking likes, fucking baby. It was a real baby about it. That's the thing. After having all of us tear gassed to hell and back for weeks, we have tons of people, his cops gassed. As soon as it becomes a national anti-Trump thing, the motherfucker goes out to get tear gassed once, like a big baby, and say like,

oh, this shouldn't be done. And then goes right back to tear gassing people. His cops never stopped gassing people. I just, anyway, Ted Wheeler sucks. Go to Total Recall PDX to help recall him. And if anyone wants to start a band that makes fun of Ted Wheeler, here's a good name for you. Tears for Fear Gassed. Sean, that's a good one. I would have gone with, shit, I don't actually have one in the chamber. Wheeler in the sky? Damn it. Okay, you're ahead of me on this one. Guns and Ted's? No, that's terrible. Guns and Rose City's? God damn it. Okay, well, all right.

Guns and Rose City. Yeah, I'm going to give up trying to win this one. So, Sean, are you ready to learn a little bit more about Josh Duggar? Yeah, I can still feel. Yeah, we had a... We'll deal with that little problem. So, in 2003, Josh Duggar returned home from the treatment program run by ATI that he'd been sent to because he molested two of his sisters. Now, it was at this point that his father, Jim Bob, decided to involve law enforcement, likely as a matter of self-protection.

If this ever came out in the future, he'd want to be able to say that he went to the cops when it first started. Duggar's project was a state trooper who was a friend of the Duggar family. Joshua confessed and the trooper presumably told him, don't do it again. Now, there's a federal law that says that people who are like cops and teachers are what are called mandatory reporters. This means that if a child or anyone really reports child abuse to you, you have to report it to somebody. You have to escalate it up, basically. You can't just be like, yeah, it sounds fucked up. You're committing a crime if you don't then go on to report it. This is the case for teachers. Is it for health care professionals?

I was going to say, to even go to see how basic of a protect the children thing is, when we get an Amber Alert in the hospital, everyone that's an employee drops what they're doing and goes to doorways to make sure if someone's trying to escape, maybe the kid wander off, maybe someone tried to steal a baby, that happens. There's new stories that come up every now and then, someone gets either grief or they're having mental issues, so they go and they try to get a baby. Basically, everyone has to drop what they're doing and go buy a public doorway, check everyone that goes by, like you got a backpack, you got to make sure... If we're not working directly, we don't work directly with kids or not everyone is,

like I don't from doing cleaning and stuff like that, but that's like everyone's stop. There's a child safety thing going on. Yeah, I mean, that makes... So this is, again, as you're saying, this is a really basic and very like you are supposed to, if you are a mandatory reporter, take this very seriously. You can go to fucking prison if you don't take it seriously. It's a big deal. The state trooper did not report this to anybody. He didn't tell a soul and the decision of a lawman to break the law in order to protect a child molester may seem confusing if you don't know much about the cop in question. This is supposed to be one of those things, even all of my issues with the police.

As a general rule, most people are like, well, but child molesters, we can all agree fuck those people, right? It's supposed to be a thing that even very wildly opposed people are like, well, yeah, like we were all on the same page about this issue, right? Not in this case. So he's more of a mentor in this case. He's more of a mentor in this case. In 2007, four years after his conversation with Josh Duggar, officer Joseph Hutchins pled guilty to eight felony counts of, quote, possessing visual or print medium depicting sexually explicit contact involving a child. Hutchins was released from prison on good behavior in 2010, and then while still on parole,

he was arrested again and charged with four counts of distribution, possession or viewing of sexually explicit material involving a child. He was resentenced to 56 years in prison, where he is now and will probably die because even cop privilege has his limits. They did try to let him out after three years. Well, I mean, that's just cruel. 56, you know, one more year could have gotten that Heinz deal. Could have gotten that sponsorship. Heinz is very big in sponsoring child molesters. You got a 57 in front of anything.

Heinz will throw some money at you. He's gotten them in trouble a lot. It's, you know, they should have rethought that idea. In Heinz's sight. So from 2005 on, the Duggars grew increasingly popular and relevant. The wild success of their and counting because they changed the name. You know, kids is like whatever and counting shows. We're just going to call it and counting lost.

Yeah, they were. This made them the single most popular public ministry for the quiverful movement. They were never identified as being part of such a movement on air. Of course, Josh Duggar and continued to be a major part of the show because again, nobody knew that he'd done this right outside of this small circle. His marriage was the focus of a special very Duggar wedding episode. The births of his three children were also covered. Now, while the family was successful in covering up Josh's crimes,

the crimes themselves continued. He molested at least three other minors, a total of five victims during the early aughts. And four of them were his sisters. One of them was a baby sister. We'll talk more about this was a babysitter. We'll talk more about this later. But he has at least five child victims. While the truth about Josh did not become widely known for years,

there was however evidence of it if you knew where to look in 2006. Oprah Winfrey booked Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar on her show. The whole family was flown to Chicago, taken out for expensive meals and put up in hotels at Oprah's expenses. The way Oprah obviously it's the way the show works. The episode never aired and as best as I can determine, it seems that someone close to the family found out Josh's secret. There were claims and it's kind of weird.

I don't think we know exactly what happens, but like some family member like wrote or someone close to the family wrote about what had happened on a note and like put it in a book and someone else who was I think an associate found the book a woman in her 60s. This person wrote a letter to Oprah saying like, hey, don't have these people on your show. They're kids of child molester. Yes, I love the John and God episode.

You know, it's one of those things. 99.9% of the time when Oprah comes up on one of these shows, we're being very negative towards her fact checking. This is not that kind of story. Oprah does exactly the right thing in this situation, which is not a thing that happens often, but I will give credit where it's due here. They handle it right.

So because obviously Oprah has an effectively infinite pile of money, she set a team of people into investigating the manner and again, a fairly rare example of journalistic integrity for the Oprah Winfrey show. They seem to have found some comments online, repeating the allegations, whatever they dug up, concerned Oprah enough that it seems that she reported them to the Arkansas State Police Child Protection Agency and the Washington County Child Protection Agency. She didn't just, the episodes never aired.

She didn't just cancel the episodes, but it seems that she reported the Duggers, which is the right thing to do. That's always like the heartbreaking thing for me with Oprah. It's like she's the stand-in for the gullibility of America. They're just, I just want it to be true. This sounds so good. I want to feel good about it.

And then it just stuff spins out or she's like, oh, she follows through. It's like, she did this time. And again, she's helped enable molesters in other situations. Unfortunately, but this time she did, she did everything right. As far as I can tell, as far as we know, she did everything right. That didn't matter as much as it should, perhaps. We can argue maybe there was more that could,

but she took them off her show and she reported them to law enforcement as far as we can tell. The official police report that we've quoted from was filed in December of 2006. So it does seem likely that she reported them and there was an official police report, right? Now, if so, if this is how it actually went, because all of this is a little murky, it gets kudos for being more critical of the Duggars image

than any other mainstream media organ. Nobody else really devoted that much of a critical eye to them. And again, I'm going to be a fair man here. Now, in more recent years, once all this blew up, Gawker did a deep dive to see what allegations they could find online about Josh Duggard that might have been floating around when the Duggars were supposed to be on Oprah.

The earliest comment they found seems to have come from a commenter on a 2005 blog and the name she used was Concerned Mom. And this blog alleges misconduct by the anonymous son of a political man at her church. Quote, A few years ago, the men of the church were meeting after church to discuss my friend's teenage daughter's apparel. They felt like their blouses were too tight

and they should bind their chests up more. Go figure. At the same time, the son of one of these political men was touching one of my friend's teenage daughters in a sexual way as she slept. This was found out and apologies were made although the boy was tempted by the girl's tight blouse. The boy was sent to one of the training centers to be punished.

My friends did not return to the home church for quite some time after this. At the same time, the boy mentioned earlier was betrothed to a girl in the group. Both were 14 at the time. The betrothal was broken up by the boy's actions. Just this last year, the family of the young man mentioned before was highlighted on the Discovery Channel.

At the time, they had 14 children and were about to have another and the mom was receiving a mother of the year award from our governor. Since that time, the same boy was betrothed again to the same girl. He was working very hard on a campaign for U.S. Senate for the girl's father. The father lost the campaign. He immediately began looking for sin in the camp as that could be the only explanation for the loss.

He found out that the young man betrothed to his daughter had committed sexual sins while on the campaign trail. The young man, now 16, was made to stand in front of the church and confess his sin. Again, she doesn't name the Duggars, but it's the only family with a Discovery show. There was another member of the church. Jim Holt was his name, who was running for office.

Josh, because they wanted Josh in politics, worked on the campaign. The campaign didn't go well, and they blamed it on the fact that everyone knew he was a fucking molester. It only became a problem when another man in the church didn't win elections. They had to start looking for... We'll talk about more the scriptural justifications for this,

especially when there was sin in the camp. That's when he became an actual problem for them, that he was molesting kids. Typical guy getting mad at someone else when he couldn't get his election up. Am I right? That was a rough one. I'm not going to lie to you.

That was a rough one. Now, in order to understand why this fact, after, again, molesting kids? Not a big punishment. Sending in a way that lost a political election to another prominent man in the church, that got him a significant punishment. In order to understand why there's that kind of discrepancy,

why molesting kids does not earn you much of a punishment in this community, you have to understand what the Institute for Basic Life Principles calls the umbrella of protection. I'm going to quote from their own stupid website here. God-given authorities can be considered umbrellas of protection. By honoring and submitting to authorities, you will receive the privileges of their protection,

direction, and accountability. If you resist their instructions and move out from their jurisdictional care, you forfeit your place under their protection and face life's challenges and temptations on your own. The Institute goes on to state, under the overarching umbrella of his protection, God has established significant jurisdictional structures.

Family, husbands and parents, government leaders, church leaders, elders and other believers, and employers. There's a lot to talk about with that. That's not great. The way this works in practice is that if anything goes wrong in a child's life or with someone's wife,

it is because they were not properly submitting to authority and thus lost godly protection, the protection of God's umbrella. Likewise, the reason this other member of the church's political campaign failed isn't that he was a bad candidate. It was that Josh Duggar sinned and opened up a hole in the umbrella

that let Satan it, basically. That's the idea here. This, not repeatedly molested, well, this was caused by molesting his sisters, but the fact that it damaged the umbrella protection is why he got punished, right? That's what was actually bad about this. Now, the reason for this involves a few different factors.

One, as I elaborated on earlier, is that men's sexual misdeeds are seen as fundamentally rooted in the behavior of the women they assault or molest. That's pretty fucked up, but the other factor here is arguably even worse. Under the fundamentalist doctrine the Duggars follow, the Gospel of Bill Godford,

all sexuality outside of procreative marital sex is a sin. Again, quiverful kids aren't allowed to date. They engage in something called courtship, which has very frustrating rules, and under which, if you're like holding hands before marriage, that is not okay. That is a serious sin. And in fact, is a sin on the same level

as what Josh Duggar did to his siblings? Now, every interaction prior to marriage between male and female must be carefully chaperoned. Healthy exploration is not seen as something that exists. And when all sex, and even like handholding, is equally taboo, when masturbation is the same as child molestation,

there's no reason to punish a young man who molests his sisters more than a young man who finds a playboy in the woods, because the sin is the same, which is not great, not great. I mean, it's kind of like how when you attach these draconian penalties to possession of large amounts of illegal drugs,

there are people who be like, well, why shouldn't I just kill the cop or something who's trying to arrest me? Like, it's a life in prison either way. I might as well try to get away, you know? Like, it's this, if you treat, I don't know, it's not great. It doesn't work well ever when you do this.

Well, and in the specific way and what you've seen from the episodes, is it creates an extremes on two ends, where one, because everything is under the umbrella of sin, under just like this just general sin outside of marriage, things that are super fucked up, like molestation, get, the severity gets not treated seriously. And the stuff like holding hands gets treated way too seriously.

And so then you get those kind of extremes where you have Josh Dugger molesting people and possibly that guy in Atlanta shooting up a spa. It comes from that, say, it's one of those kind of... A total lack of proportion. Total lack of proportion. It's like throwing a bouncy ball into an empty room. You don't know where it's going to end up hitting.

Yeah, that's exactly right. Now, repeated studies have found that abstinence only approaches to sex education. And again, these are generally way less restrictive than quiverful sex ed. Just abstinence only is not the same as quiverful sex ed. But repeated studies have found that this attitude towards sex, just abstinence only programs,

do not decrease sexual behaviors among kids, but do cause kids to engage in riskier sex because they lack the education to do it safely. It also robs kids of the vocabulary they need to adequately explain when something unacceptable has happened or been done to them. In her book, A Love That Multiplies,

Michelle Dugger gives a story that her husband tells to their kids to explain the importance of purity. From this, we can get an idea of the kind of sex ed that the Dugger kids, both perpetrator Josh and his victims benefited from. And this is Michelle Dugger's writing. So buckle in for some prose.

Imagine that your parents are going to surprise you and give you a brand new bike for Christmas. Two weeks before Christmas, they buy your bike and hide it in the storage shed in the backyard. But then the boy next door sneaks into the shed and borrows your new bike. He stunt rides it up and down the back alley. On Christmas morning, your parents lead you out to the shed

to reveal the special gift they bought for you. And as they open the door and say, surprise, they're just as surprised as you are. You're all shocked to see that the bike looks like it's been thrown off a cliff. The front fender is missing and the front tire is warped so it rubs on the frame. It's dirty, the paint is all scratched and chipped

and the seat has a big rip in it. It looks worse than something you would have bought at a garage sale. I'm sure you would still be grateful for the bike and you would have fun riding it, but it won't be in the condition your parents had hoped and dreamed it would be when you received it. You would miss out on a lot of the enjoyment they meant for you to have.

In the same way, we don't want any boy or girl to come and steal your purity. Pros, more like amateurs, am I right? Yeah, I mean, because everyone will be an amateur because you don't know anything when you're married, but also a little bit of shame. I mean, some people are into rips seats. I mean, come on.

Some people are into rips seats. Some people like mud on the tires. Some people don't need a fender. It's also, you know, not great. Number one, one of the weird things about this is that for a community that attacks the secular world as being obsessed with sex and sexuality, they're completely reducing marriage to just fucking,

to just virginity, right? As opposed to just like, well, people tend to meet and get married and like life has already happened to them and you kind of take the person as they are and everything that's happened to them and that's part of, if you're in love with someone, what you love about them is the experiences

they've had in the person it's made them. This is saying like, no, if they're used at all, they're not as good. Well, and it's a warping of the experience of love because the idea and the life experience and the joy of love is that the more you give, the more you have. And this is saying that, no, your love is a finite thing

and that any sort of usage of it takes away from it. It's like Donald Trump and his, I don't exercise because my body's a battery, it's gonna run out. It is like that, yeah. But with love. But with love. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot that's wrong with it including the idea that like,

well, it's actually like if your parents got you a bike but by the time it was in the shed because it got rode so much, other kids came in and upgraded the bike and it was a much better bike because people had realized, oh, you actually need these new wheels to like do a better job of going up these hills. And I don't know, we could,

I don't want to continue making bike as fucking metaphors but you could. Well, you know, I mean, it's something that's gonna happen. It's very cyclical. Yeah. Sean, you know what else is cyclical? Oh, the rising of the seventh moon on the plains of a distant planet where?

Presumably, yeah. I mean, unless it's like an elliptical orbit, I guess, yeah. I mean, that's kind of, but I was gonna say what cyclical is capitalism because you start with money and money buys products and products create more money and then you get more money to buy more products.

It's a perfect circle. Yeah. Perfect circle, Sean. I mean, the products are fine. I mean, once you use the product once, I mean, it's not what your parents wanted for you so you gotta go get a new one. So don't buy the bikes that are advertised on our show

if someone's had sex with them, I think is the conclusion we're coming here to here. I was gonna say, you know, just like get like, you know, like how you get those one-use like dispense packs but just get, but with bikes. Yeah, get like a 12 pack of bikes from Costco. You get a 12 packs of bikes.

Yeah, you don't want to ride a bike twice. Yeah, I know. Yeah, hopefully Costco's gonna come in here with a... I mean, look, your parents are sitting at home going, oh God, I hope he doesn't get a bike. That's already been ridden. Someone else's ass on my boy's bike.

What have I done? All right, here's products. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson

and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys,

we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good badass way.

He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science.

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match

and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories.

But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart.

And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back.

So in the almost 10 years that followed that first police report, which was, again, 2006, the Duggar family grew more popular and more powerful within right-wing political circles. Mike Huckabee, former governor and presidential candidate, was regularly seen with both Jim Bob and Joshua. They were very tight in with Huckabee.

In 2008, he hired Josh to help run his failed presidential primary campaign. In 2012, Josh spoke at rallies for presidential candidate Rick Santorum, a man so bigoted that his last name was turned into a recognized term for the mix of shit come and lube that results from anal sex. In 2013, Josh Duggar was hired

by the Family Research Council. Who are themselves kind of like political Santorum? Now, the FRC wanted him to be the new face of their organization, and he was made as like, I think he's like 19, 20, he's a young man here. He's made the executive director of FRC Action, the lobbying arm of the right-wing organization,

actually a little bit in his mid-20s, I think. Now, a Fox News article functioned as a press release for this, because Fox News is basically the press arm of the FRC. And in that article, they wrote, quote, the FRC's political platforms include firm stances against abortion and same-sex marriage. Josh and his wife, Anna, have been an inspiration

to millions of Americans who regularly turn in to see the Duggar family show. And all of us at FRC and FRC Action have long appreciated their commitment to the pro-family movement. FRC Action President Tony Perkins said in a statement, we welcome him to the FRC Action team and look forward to taking our grassroots outreach

to the next level. Now, the FRC itself called Josh the new face of faith in politics. People who walked in similar circles to the Duggar family at the time will claim that Josh was seen as an eventual candidate for a higher office, perhaps even a potential presidential candidate someday.

That's always the dream of these people, right? They want, like, Pence was a big deal in part because, like, that's as close, that's the closest they've gotten, one of their, you know, someone who's in the cult, so to speak. And that's what they kind of hoped for. He was being groomed for childhood to do something nationally in politics.

And as the face of FRC Action, he fought to block and roll back the rights of LGBTQ people, conflating them with pedophiles and arguing against their right to adopt children because they might molest them. Which, again, he's a child molester, arguing that trans and gay people

can't be trusted with kids because they'll molest them. As he's molesting people, I don't know, like, how much do you harp on it, right? Like, it's the thing. Well, but yeah, because he's, here's part of the other thing with, like, having everything under the umbrella of sin. If you're in the club,

if you're in the Jesus club, you can always repent. We can put you in front of the congregation, but we can't put these LGBTQ in front of the congregation. They're never gonna repent. They might just raise their kids and not molest them and never repent for being gay. Whereas it's better, I don't know.

That really is the attitude, that it's better for these kids to be molested by godly people who can then repent. So to hammer that point, to do a little bit of a tangent that does hammer that point home, it's like a lot of when you get into, like, the dominionist, reconstructionist, whatever,

like, if you get in talking about slavery, a lot of them will be like, slavery was good because they weren't Christian, and the black people were in Christian households. So the fact that they were in a Christian household as slaves and the way they were treated, it was a better life for them than being a heathen.

Their souls were saved. Right, their souls were saved. So that's also what you're, again, what you're looking at. It starts with the conclusion, oh, Jesus is head of everything and then is in charge of everything and then works backwards.

So anything that is closer to him as we define it is always going to be better objectively. Yeah, you've seen the same argument has been made recently. I forget the exact website,

but there was just a big column about how they murdered at residential schools in the U.S. And it was American, like, it was actually good because, even though they died, they weren't heathens anymore. So like, any amount of death is okay if they're not heathens anymore.

Which goes back to colonialism, which they kind of both egged each other on colonialism and evangelizing to do fun things. These people suck, is the gist of it. They're not great. So in 2014, the Duggar family went to war

against an anti-discrimination ordinance that would have gone into effect in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The ordinance was meant to strengthen protections for LGBT and particularly trans residents. It would have created a new position on the city staff dedicated to handling discrimination complaints pertaining to housing, employment, etc.

for LGBT people. It would have also banned businesses from discriminating against queer people. The Duggar's spoke out against this ordinance and Michelle even went as so far with her voice to a robo-call. I'm going to read a segment from this and please do your best

to upload from the irony. So, obviously, if somebody, they trans or not, had convictions for child molestation, they're not allowed to go into a restroom where children are because they're not allowed to

get close to children. To be fair, she did not list their own beds as a place of privacy for women and children. So on her end, it works, right? Yeah, and they're arguments after it came out, publicly, of what Josh had done.

There's this, they got questioned about, like, well, we're just yelling about how trans people shouldn't be able to use bathrooms because it's bad for kids, but your son molested your children. How do you square that? And one of their arguments was, well, he wasn't a pedophile

because he was a child, too. Okay, okay, Michelle, is that what you got to tell yourself to get to sleep at night? Um, okay. Now, that same year, 2014, more than 30

of Bill Gothard's female employees came forward with allegations that he had molested or sexually harassed them. Have you been aware of this? Yeah, so this is a big deal, and it like torpedoes his organization. Some of the people he molested were children.

So again, this is the third child molester we've encountered in this community. And there's, you can find a lot of other stories about, and again, there's, we quoted someone earlier saying, like, I knew multiple families where this had happened. It's because this,

in a lot of ways, this cult is built around providing predators with access to victims. Yeah, I was going to say, like, a cult just, just as a concept is built on predation. Yeah. And so, predation is pretty much allowing uh,

the desires of the predator to be sexual, and this is just going to happen. Yeah, now, my cult is based around the desire to prey on the FDA, which is, I think, very ethical. So, yes, we might attack FDA convoys, uh,

we might kidnap FDA officials. That's possible. Anything's possible when the FDA's in play. But that's the only people we hunt is the FDA. And hey, if the, if the first point maybe, maybe, you know what, if you go through a bunch of iterations

and the first 44 don't work, you'll have cult 45. Oh, yeah. We could, we could, we could get a sponsorship from Billy Dee Williams. Yeah. Yeah, there we go. Or if you get to, you know, the 57th iteration, you got the Heinz money. Then we get, we get that Heinz money,

which we use to buy arms in order to fight the FDA. I'm pretty sure you can get John Kerry as a sponsor if you get that Heinz money. I think, you know, and John Kerry, John Kerry has a combat experience, you know, in a way, that's what we're talking about. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's much more than that, right? That's the number who were willing to come forward. 10 more victims sued him in 2016.

Here's a quote from an article about that by the Washington Post. One of the Jane Doe plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleges that she was raped by her father and her other relatives and says she was sold by her father through human trafficking when she was a minor. She said she reported the abuse and trafficking to IBLP staff, which failed to report to authorities. When the Jane Doe plaintiff was at a ministry's training center,

she and Gothard both called her father and Gothard asked him if abuse allegations were true. The lawsuit states, after her father denied the allegations, she said Gothard threatened her. Gothard taught that children were to obey their parents, even if they were being sexually abused, the lawsuit says. The Jane Doe then alleges that Gothard

had sexual intercourse with her without her consent, saying she notified IBLP of the rape through an email in 2013. She alleges that an IBLP employed counselor also raped her in his office at an IBLP training center in Indianapolis. David Gibbs III, the plaintiff's lawyer, said that she is not sure how old she was

at the time of the alleged rapes, but was likely around 17 or 18 years old. Again, these kids don't have documents a lot of the time. Another woman in the lawsuit, Ruth Copley-Burger, who was the adopted daughter of the counselor in question alleges that her father sexually molested her. I'm reading this very unpleasant to you.

That's, it's fucking endemic. It is all over. And I have never heard any allegations about Jim Bob this way. But it is a lot of the patriarchs that are involved in this. It is fucking everywhere in this cult. It's not cool and good. It's really not cool and good.

But, you know, thankfully, this is the only large religious-based organization where that has ever happened. Yes, no other church has done anything like this. It's not like when you claim that there's a hierarchy that gives certain people more access to God, they will use that perceived moral authority

to prey on people. That's never happened another time. In fact, there's a giant banner outside the head of the Archdiocese in Boston, molestation-free since 1 A.D. That's their code. The famously never been involved

in any horrible... You know, one of the things I've always been interested in, and I'm, again, not a religious person, but there's a pretty fascinating history of Catholic anarchism and Christian anarchism and Christian anarchism. In general, that is based

in a lot of what it's based on. It's this idea that, like, well, every time you set up a hierarchy that presupposes certain people are closer to God than others, it seems to be a nightmare that leads to death and molestation and war.

Perhaps that should never be the case. Which I also think, I don't know, not a Bible expert, but it seems like Jesus would have been more on board with. Yeah, well, it's just like, let's try something different. The most frustrating thing is the lack of acknowledgement that it's that

being at a specific place in a specific hierarchy, regardless of what you think that means, somehow makes you, in a way, less human as far as not being susceptible to abusing that position. And it's just, it's kind of like,

well, no, that's, you have to, that's, you know, yeah. So I see, like, there's just a, it's lack of transparency is how is the first wall to go up. Because it's, yeah. Yeah, it's a bummer.

So at this point in US history, it should be clear that any moral crusaders who base a lot of their arguments on the idea that trans or gay people are threats to children, as a general rule, these people are either harming kids themselves

or enabling other people who are harming kids. It's such a consistent thing. Not a hundred percent, but a lot of the people who do that kind of shit. And the rank hypocrisy, and the rank hypocrisy of the Duggar clan goes further than that. Well, they kept their mouths fucking shut about Bill Gothard in the wake

of his fall from grace. They'd been doing that for years because their job was to subtly influence people towards fundamentalism without scaring him off. So it's not like they had been super public about Bill, but he, they never like, I don't, I don't have any faith in the idea that they've

disavowed this guy either. It's well, it's like they're the Tom Cruz to his... to his miscovige. Now, Josh, the face of the Family Research Council and the last best hope of heavenly rule on earth, spent his entire time

as a family values lobbyist, as a paid member of the website Ashley Madison. Now, if you don't recall, Ashley Madison was basically a dating app that married people who wanted to cheat on their spouses that eventually got all of its data leaked and hilarity ensued.

From 2013 to 2015, he paid a total of $986.76 to the site. So he was a he was a power user, you could say. It was, yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of money to spend on the adultery website. Christian Morrill Crusader,

Josh Decker. I kind of stuck on the 76 cents. Was it like tax? Yeah, it has to have been, right? Was it one of those, oh, I hate like you can't even go and cheat on people without having that 99 cents thing, like just round up. Come on. I bet he was really angry about tax being added to his adultery.

He was so bad. This is going to funds in. People might get welfare. This makes me angry, which makes me horny. So he listed his desire in finding he listed his desire on like the way it's a dating website, right? So you get to like

list your stuff about you. He lists listed his desire as to finding an extramarital partner for quote conventional sex experimenting with sex toys. One night stands open to experimentation, gentleness, good with your hands, sensual massage,

extended for play teasing, bubble bath for two, likes to give oral sex, likes to receive oral sex, someone I can teach, someone who can teach me kissing, cuddling and hugging, sharing fantasies and sex talk. Now, I wouldn't be getting into this

if it weren't for the fact that every aspect of his life and job was based around the idea that all of this should be illegal, right? Now, he listed his services, listed as services, the fact that he had the reasons people should be interested in him, the fact that he had good

personal hygiene, a secret love nest and was drug free. Now, also in 2014, the year that Bill Gothard got busted from molesting children and one of the years in which Josh Duggar paid money to cheat on his wife, the four older Duggar sisters cashed in on their family fame by publishing

the book, Growing Up Duggar. It's all about relationships. Josh and his wife Anna were invited to discuss their marriage. The book includes this passage from Josh. As I became a young man, I was constantly tempted to have lots of wrong thoughts and often battled to keep my heart right.

One of the greatest things that helped me in my struggles was my parents' commitment to accountability. They were faithful to talk with each of us children, if we were willing to share honestly and openly with them, to maintain a clear conscience. I learned quickly that great freedom can be achieved by accountability, but that deep accountability requires

humility and openness. I often had failures in my early teenage years, but I found that I had a clear conscience, only when I was willing to confess my thoughts quickly to God and to my parents. The Bible passage Duggar cites in this, he cites John 119, which reads,

if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness, which is what you were talking about. Wait, you're telling me the family that does a capitalism on how it runs released a form statement

with an inspirational quote? They released a book that he gave a quote in. The way in which the daughters he molested his sisters have responded to this is also very bleak. Because they're also his victims,

I'm not going to get into a lot of criticism or great detail about it, but we'll talk about it a little later. Now, of course, Josh kept his sins hidden while he was and he just had said that you have to confess quickly and openly to God and people's, but he kept his sins hidden while

he was lobbying against the rights of gay and trans people to raise children. This is a big part of what he did for the FRC. He was a big anti gay rights advocate. And it was always judges like this is bad for kids. But those sins did not stay secret. In May of 2015, the gossip website in touch succeeded

in foyaing their way to the truth. They published the long buried 2006 police report detailing abuse by Josh Duggar. Josh and his family initially claimed to deflect criticism or initially attempted to deflect criticism by making weasley claims about the exact extent of the abuse.

In a Facebook statement, Josh wrote, 12 years ago, as a young teenager, I acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret. I hurt others, including my family and close friends. There was a lot of talk about like, oh, it was above the clothes. It was never like they, it was

it's almost as gross as anything, just like reading them try to talk about why it's not really a big deal that he molested four of his sisters in a babysitter. Now, Josh was forced to resign from the family research council. Jim Bob and Michelle made weasley statements about how they'd watched their son like a hawk ever since the initial

incidents and that they believed he'd changed with God's help. But the hits kept coming. Two of their daughters, Jessa and Jill, chose to self-identify as their brother's victims in July. And they actually spoke up to defend Josh and claimed that they'd been victimized by in touch publishing the police report.

Jessa claimed, the system that was set up to protect kids, both those who make stupid mistakes or have problems like this in their life and the ones that are affected by those choices, it's greatly failed. I don't agree with them on this. And again, I'm not going to like morally go after them for defending Josh because whatever

they have to live in this. But I don't think in touch did anything wrong. They did not publish any names. They did not say, here's who he molested. They published that this guy was a sexual predator who was not punished and who had a very public position claiming to defend children. That's in the

public interest. I'm sorry, but it is. But it just sounds like it's what it's that kind of like with with the kind of that cold atmosphere, there's that kind of

sometimes literal in this figurative bunker mentality where it's like, yeah, there's problems in here, but they're supposed to be just in here. And so you kind of you put a you put a unified front and attack the out there. Yep. Yep. That's exactly what's and it's

you know, you also you get into this. There's this there are cases there have always been of people who have children who are molested and do not see what was done to them as bad. And I guess a good public example would be you have a couple of different rock stars who had sex with groupies were 14, 15,

16, right? A number of those women or young and we're like, I'm fine with it. It was a good experience. It's still rape. Yeah. It's still like even if and I'm not going to say like they should be more obviously if that happens to you and you feel you don't feel traumatized, that's good.

I get it's always better to not feel traumatized, but like that person that is still statutory rape. That's not acceptable. Well, it's it's it's the it's the power dynamic that yeah, or even if they even if the person on the lower end of that feels that was consensual enough where they

they weren't it's still like, no, these people, they're they're taking advantage of you and it's it's a another step in predatory behavior that could come out as worse for the next person. Yeah. And it's it's the I mean, obviously this is much more severe than that because

this is like obviously, but it's all kind of along the same chain of it is the fact and it's very morally calm and I'm not going to get into this much more and focus on like his victims, but like the idea that like they have downplayed what was done to them, which, you know,

people have the freedom to say it, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't a serious crime. It's it's yeah. But you know what is a serious crime. Not buying these products and services. Not buying these products and services. That's right. That's right.

Jesus Christ. Okay. Well . . . During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations

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So, Josh's sisters kind of came to his defense. They argued that the charges that their brother was a pedophile and a child molester were so overboard and a lie. One argument the Duggar parents made was that since the abuse occurred, while he was also a child

molester, he can't have been a child molester or a pedophile. We'll put a pin in that for right now. It's worth noting that two other Duggar sisters were molested by Josh. Again, it started with two. And I don't know the exact time frame, but four sisters, at least one was molested

after Jim and Bob Duggar, Jim Bob and Michelle became aware of the abuse. Another victim of Josh was a non-family member who worked as a babysitter for the family when she was a teenager. I have not found a lot of details about this case. The Duggar family repeatedly stated their belief that their TV show would not need to be canceled

as a result of these revelations. On July 16, 2006 was when Oprah kind of figured stuff out. So you kind of have that as far as like a timeline. Yeah. Yeah. So before that it seems likely that it was like 2003 to 2006. Yeah. If he was born in 88, that's 15

to 18. Yeah, exactly. On July 16, though, TLC permanently canceled 19 kids and counting. Some Republicans who had posed with members of the family, like Marco Rubio, slinked off into the background and tried just not to make a statement on the matter. But Mike

Huckabee charged head first into this at a culture war issue. He called Josh's actions inexcusable, but that doesn't mean unforgivable. And then said that like we're, you know, coming to the family with love and support. If only they had been around when cancel culture was in full swing. Yeah.

Can't cancel someone just for repeatedly molesting children. Now on July. Yeah. So right around this time, the abuse, the user database for Ashley Madison leaked. So all of this comes out. Josh Duggar is outed. Then it comes out that he's been paying

to cheat on his wife. Not a great year for Josh Duggar 2015. He made another piddling apology where he called himself a hypocrite and talked about his pornography addiction is like, I'm a, it's the evil porn that has made me do all these bad things. Almost immediately

after this, a sex worker, Danica Dillon, came forward and filed suit against Josh, alleging that during a paid consensual sex encounter, he brutally assaulted her. Josh denied the allegations and Dillon did eventually withdraw her lawsuit claiming I didn't have the money to take on TLC or the

Duggar family. And I, again, don't have a lot of detail on that seems very like, that's a very good reason to drop a lawsuit. I get, I get why she would have done that. I believe her seems totally in character for Josh Duggar. We know he's willing to pay for sex

one way or the other. We know he's willing to assault people, I believe. His sense of boundaries do not exist. His sense of boundaries don't exist. He claims to have some evidence that like, I think of the tax he received he was in a different place. I don't know. I'm not an expert on the case. Josh checked himself into rehab. Of course, it was a biblically

based program called reformers unanimous. And for a while he was able to successfully hide from public scrutiny. This kind of goes away a little bit. His wife, Anna, stayed with him and TLC did eventually decide to reboot the Duggar's show without Josh under a new name.

And it seemed as if they were going to get to sweep all this under the rug. In the name of TLC's profits, obviously. But that's not what happened. From a write up by Delaney Bartlett, who, again, grew up in the same community. In late 2019 there was a hint that trouble might be on the way back to Josh when federal agents rated

his used car dealership. Always a sentence you can say about the best people. The entire incident was kept very hush-hush. The nature of their investigation, what they were looking for if they found anything, none of it was released to the public. But those of us who knew Josh Duggar suspected it was something more. Sex offenders, especially

pedophiles, require long-term intensive therapy from qualified mental health professionals. You can't pray it away. And Josh was practically swimming in a culture that excuses and enables sex offenders. Evidence shows that Duggar's knew something else was going to go down after the raid. In 2020, Josh

started moving a lot of his assets. He sold the family home and bought a new unfinished home in Springdale. But he didn't move into it. Instead, he sold it to an LLC in Anna's name and immediately put it up for sale. He then moved Anna and their six children into a windowless outbuilding on Jim Bob's property.

He also shuttered his used car dealership and immediately opened four limited liability corporations in Anna's name. Remember, in the Duggar's fundamentalist world view, only the husband as the head of the family is supposed to own and manage the family's financial resources. But not if you've

just gotten raided for child porn. And see, I mean, total amateur bastard move there. Look, this is the point we're supposed to go to Mexico. You should have gone to Mexico, right? Go to Mexico. I'm not going to give a child molester crime advice here. Look, you got a used

car dealership. Always, you know, next thing. You have an untrace or harder to trace car act. You know, you can go down to Mexico. I hear there's some great doctors that will give you some plastic surgery. Yeah, that's a shame. Well, not a shame

because he's a pedophile. He also yeah. So again, it just goes to talk about like how related to convenience all of this shit is, like it's perfectly fine to like women aren't supposed to have

access to money at all. But like if, you know, you need to hide the fact that or if you need to hide your assets because the feds are after you for child porn. Well, got to understand. Yeah. Now, we have more recently learned what the feds

were after, were like after on this rate. So there's a rate in 2019, but they don't say, you know, they're the feds. They're not going to say what anything is about until they're done, like building their case. That's the way that kind of stuff tends to work. And of course, we now know that he was rated because Josh was viewing and downloading child pornography.

He absolutely is a pedophile and a rather extreme one based on the evidence we have. The Homeland Security Special Agent who examined Josh's computer described what he found there as quote, in the top five of the worst of the worst that I've ever had to examine.

And so again, with Bell and Cat, we do some work with Interpol in terms of trying to track down pedophiles, particularly people making child porn. And the way that it works is that they have people who actually view the pornography and will take screen grabs from it and cut out

the human beings, remove anything that's actually like sexual in nature, anything that's obviously is illegal. And we'll just get like photos of like stuff that's in the room. So like toys that are in the room, like maybe views out of, and the goal is like, where is this happening? Because sometimes there's certain resorts that these people use.

Is this the same person in this other video? Well, you never see the people. But it's like, here's a toy maybe we can find. If there was like, not the person involved in the act, but like if you see someone. Yeah. Anything that might help you track down details around it. And it's

very complicated and painstaking work. But the worst work is the people and it's a very small number of people who are actually viewing the original pornography, which is you have individuals like that who are in law enforcement, both federal and kind of internationally. And I think there's

also, there are certain like researchers and journalists who can, there's like ways to get legal approval to like analyze certain porn. And like that kind of work is the worst thing I can imagine doing because like they have to look at the

child abuse videos. I can't imagine a more difficult or traumatizing job. And a guy whose job is to do that says Josh Duggar's porn stash is like one of the worst things I've seen in my career looking at child pornography.

Yeah. Which is a statement. Yeah. I mean, it's any of that. Cause like I've actually, it's about a decade ago now I was on a grand jury. Which is if people aren't familiar with that, there's you get jury duty, you're on a case.

Grand jury duty is where you have your four weeks, it's a nine to five in a room and you see a bunch of, and the prosecutors bring evidence and you kind of give a yes or no vote to whether it goes to trial. Yeah. Right. And we, I was in Multnomah County, it was

the, I forget which number it was, but we had cases where it was involved like child abuse, sexual abuse and the kids had to come in and be witnesses and they we had, and we had people that work specifically just with them and with the stuff that they have to deal with

coming in and helping them through it. And it was just also just incredibly tense and fraught and to just be in any part of that, especially the part where you see the the trauma happening in real time. Yeah, that's Yeah, I mean it's, there's

that whole the legal framework set up to deal with all of that, all those kind of cases is very interesting in a lot of ways. I interviewed a guy when I was working for Cracked years ago whose side job was so obviously

when children are molested, they're going to need to talk to some, give statements to law enforcement, right? Which means, ideally if you're trying to do this in the most ethical way because cops don't normally talk to children about stuff like that, you want to train them, right? Yeah. And you don't want to train them on children because you don't want to like have a kid

come in, you don't want to learn on the job with that sort of thing because it's already traumatizing for the kids. So there are actors, generally adult actors who look much younger, who train and how to mimic being a molested child and will train like federal agents and stuff to interrogate,

not interrogate, that's all. But to interview children who have been victims of sex, like it's... There's a lot of work that goes into trying to protect kids as much as possible within what is already a nightmare for them. But what's the worst second happen, like a satanic panic or something?

And if anyone is super bummed out by what we just talked about go to Bellingcat and look up what'sapp flash or flashcard app, the nuclear secrets for the nuclear secrets article. Yeah, that all of the guys... Yeah, we did an article recently, I had no involvement

in it, which was people who are much better journalists than me. But yeah, they found that like all of the people guarding our nuclear secrets had like been using public flashcard apps. You could search them and find like code phrases to like get on to nuclear weapons sites. It was like a place in like Eastern Europe

that was never a confirmed nuclear site. Yeah, there's a lot. It's very funny. Very funny how slapdash all of that is. But thankfully they put a little more thought into, I don't know, child molestation, which it's good. So, yeah,

again, this fucking the Fed whose job is to like analyze the stuff as like, Josh Duggar's computer is one of the worst things I've seen in my career of watching nightmares. The agent stated that he found multiple images on Josh's computer depicting sex abuse with children

from 12 to 18 months old. So, he has a preference for very, very young kids. Now, this came after Josh had made public statements about his Ashley Madison account, which he blamed on his pornography addiction. As a result of that, he'd installed a program called

Covenant Eyes, a Christian based a Christian based program that takes screenshots of your online activity at random and uses machine learning to analyze them to see if you're looking at porn and it sends those screenshots to a trusted ally to keep you accountable, right?

The goal is to stop you from looking at porn. Now, Covenant Eyes apparently did not detect Duggar's prolific child porn browsing because he'd installed Tor and was using he was obviously like the dark web is where you go for that shit, right? You want to buy drugs, you want to hire a hitman who's actually a Fed

or you want to find child pornography, that's what the dark web is for. And yeah, so presumably that's how he found his porn. Josh was charged with just a lot of federal crimes, a whole bunch of federal crimes. He currently faces up to 40 years

in federal prison. The U.S. district judge who handled his detention hearing said that he could not return home to live with his wife and children for reasons that I shouldn't need to explain. Now, the cult being the cult, Josh is still their special boy and his crimes are obviously the fault of Satan and probably those sinful

children. As a result, his community leapt into action to defend him while expressly ignoring the interests of vulnerable people who weren't Josh Duggar. They found another quiverful couple, Maria and LeCount Reber and convinced LeCount that they should put Josh up while his trial

went on. LeCount told the judge their home would be good for Josh because it doesn't have Wi-Fi or children. But of course, the story behind this was much more fucked up than was initially reported. From a write up by Jessica Lay on the website ChurchLeaders.com,

Josh Duggar's father, Jim Bob Duggar, called people in his church to see if any would be custodians for his son when Josh was released on bail. Jim Bob found a man willing to take Josh in. Except that man's wife teaches piano lessons to children and she was not comfortable having Josh home with her all day because

she would be alone with him while her husband was at work. That didn't matter to the husband, however. She has to find a new place to teach all those children because her husband wants Josh to live with them. That's a quote from a member of the community. You know, if he hadn't been re-arrested, they would have sent him to live with that trooper.

Well, he's in prison. If he hadn't been. He will be soon, maybe. So, Maria Reber has said that she is uncomfortable being alone with Josh Duggar and is also uncomfortable with her 22-year-old daughter being alone with him. However, at Wednesday's hearing, Reber testified, my husband has made

the decision and I'm here to support that decision. Healthy shit. Healthy shit. Now, in the reaction to Josh Duggar's charges, we see more evidence of women in his community supporting him at a cost to their own safety. And again, these women are victims. I'm not, like,

criticizing for them, but this is what's happening. They are mortgaging their own safety and the safety of their family members to protect this man. You know, can keep in mind, too. They're under the same value system where, like, yeah, he did this, but, you know, like,

I held hands with so... Yeah, I looked at a man when I was out in town recently. Yeah. Both at the same time. None of us is perfect. He molested multiple children. One time, I looked at Kurt Russell in a movie and thought he was hot.

Equal crimes, which they kind of are. We're also, you know, that, again, that tension of, like, oh, well, the civil authority or the government has civil authority over a few things and then everything else is under God and while this is a family matter, so it's under God, so we're going to be a united front, too.

Yep. Yeah. God, it's... Not great. So, the write-up I just quoted cites Rachel Denhollander at several points. She's... Sorry, that was... It wasn't a member of the community that was quoted there. It was Rachel Denhollander. Well, kind of it. So, Rachel Denhollander is best known as

the first woman to speak out and file a police report against USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, one of the most prolific child abusers in the history of child abuse. She says she was groomed for the abuse she received by Nassar because she was molested as a child

in an evangelical church. She was disgusted to see Maria Rieber being pushed to accept a child molester into her home, quote, every single family who takes piano from her and the wife herself has to uproot their routine, livelihood, and the child's musical education because Josh. Everyone is expected

to bear the cost except Josh and the wife's own very reasonable fears about being alone all day with a man who enjoys the sexual torture of toddlers didn't matter to the husband either. The men in the situation are the leaders making the decisions while the women are expected to submit.

She also provides what I think is a realistic explanation for why Ann Duggar, Josh's wife, has stood by her husband for so long, even after getting uncontrovertible, incontrovertible evidence that he is not safe to be around their children, quote, Denhollander sees Anna Duggar's silence about

her husband's sexual proclivities as symptomatic of certain evangelical teachings about the proper role of wives. Denhollander referenced several concepts promoted in some conservative circles including the complementarian teaching that wives need to respect and submit to their husbands. Some conservative Christians

emphasize the idea that God hates divorce so much that they encourage women to stay in abusive situations and it is not unusual for Christian women to be taught that they are responsible for men's lust. If they are married women are encouraged to make sure to have regular sex with their husbands

so the men will not be unfaithful. Anna certainly couldn't tell anyone because that would not be respectful, said Denhollander. That's how we counsel wives in these marriages, but she was certainly taught to have sex more to fix it. Her own mother-in-law wrote blog articles that said as much. TLC

at least canceled counting on in June of 2021 after 11 seasons on the air. They claimed that it was important to give the Duggar family the opportunity to address their situation privately, as if the family had not been given ample opportunity to address the situation privately in the more than

10 years between the first allegations and the widespread reporting on Josh's behavior. Yeah. You remember when we all thought Honey Boo Boo was the worst thing on TV? Yeah. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Not that it was great.

But it's like, oh, yeah. That's what we looked at. That's what people were freaking out about. This was just sitting there the whole time. Well, Sean, how do you feel? Did you feel good about this too, Parter? Oh, yeah.

I feel good that it's out there now. Like I said, I feel like the people and some of them in the depth it's something that comes up more in people that are kind of more versed in the communities.

And so it's good to have it out there and to have other people kind of look at or be aware of these communities, especially because, you know, again, in that kind of like you brought up like the people that are under the umbrella of authority,

employers, people this and that, you know, it seems like maybe like this isn't just like an off-road into some little group. It's like this comes back to climate change because you have people that either they're concerned is the end of the world, either to prepare it

that it's coming so they don't really care what shape the planet's in. Got to fix it all. We have to focus on doing all this moral stuff. The way we recycle or treat the environment

with our waste has nothing, is fine because we're a successful company so we're clearly blessed by God. It's wanted to seem like a tangent, because there's all these things that are very real to people who may not feel they have

any sort of connection to what's what happened in this story. That's like, well, no, this is the thinking that leads to this leads to a lot of other problems that we have because this specific religious ideology and obviously the quiverful is kind of

a more extreme expression of it, but the thoughts behind it are incredibly mainstream. The cult that you don't get to the really heart of it until you're deep into it. A lot of stuff and again, it's an offshoot of

something larger that's called mainstream, like you talked about with the Southern Baptist Convention. What's been brought up in past episodes about evangelical coming together as a voting block and throwing themselves behind the Republican

party and then eventually more the main driver. I'm sure you can go back and look and see a lot of the stuff with the Tea Party which, you know, it goes as a precursor to Donald Trump and you see the same thing. It's like grabbing by the pussy. Well, you know, he's

one of us. Who hasn't held a hand or grabbed a pussy? Yeah, if you looked at someone with lust in your eyes, it's the same as assaulting somebody so he's no worse than any of the rest of us. And they see him as, you know, obviously he became president like they wanted

Josh Duggar too so they were going to kind of try to keep the way Greece for him to go and not hold him accountable because they see him as a ticket. Yep. Well, Sean, this has been bleak, but important.

I'm glad that you picked this subject. I've been wanting again, I've been meaning to kind of deal with this at some point because it turns out we actually have some of the same friends who have gotten involved in aspects of this and I've seen people like over the years kind of feel like they kind of being more

if tending to be conservative and religious tend to slip into it. There's kind of and it's not necessarily that all religion or conservatives necessarily lead to that. There's actually I've seen a lot. Yeah, there's a lot of the great

reporting on this has been done by other Christian, even evangelical news sources who are very critical of this and are very critical of like Bill Godford and the abuse and that chunk of the community. This isn't a problem with Christianity. This is a problem with, I mean, it's a problem with human beings

and the way religion generally works. It's a deeper it's not just an it's not like the specific issue isn't Christianity. The specific issue is how people abuse each other and use systems, including religious systems to abuse each other. Right. It's to be

to be really clear and to also kind of again bring people in who may be not from as familiar on the religious side more on the secular side. You know, think about this is going to hurt, but think about Bill Maher for a second and you know, the whole like the kind of

along that lines of where it's like, oh, religion you're just taking shots at religion. Religion is a problem. If religion went away, all the problems would be solved. That kind of thinking or posturing. It's like, well, yeah, people kill like there's deaths after sporting events

when the team won like burning cars and flip like people are going to be people. It's the the it's it's Christianity gets not singled out, but it is looked at mainly because of the power structure that it has

within this country puts it right at the heart of a lot of the things and it's it's power and structures of power and hierarchy that always are what enables the abuse whatever form it takes because again if you want to talk about and I think people you know, and I had my angry atheist years, but I think one of the ways in which people go wrong

is thinking that it's something inherent to religion when it's something that's inherent to power because for example the the fucking we've done a number of episodes on nexium, you know, that that horrible cult which is very much based in like these evolved

and scientific attitudes and that's at least the way they framed it was not like supposed to be a religious cult as it was supposed to be as much of like a it was a it was a rape cult for the NPR set, you know, like that was the way it was framed. It's just anytime you give people these positions

of power where you're investing them with special knowledge and acknowledging that they have some sort of like special knowledge and special call and when you're saying that like that person is closer to some sort of special truth that makes what

they say and do more valuable than other people, you invest them with a kind of power that will more often than not be used to hurt people. Right. That's that's the way it is. Yeah, you have a critical on one end and you know, I don't know, goop.

Yeah, goop, nexium. Yeah, again, and there's an element of this that's like this is an all cult behavior. Yeah, because I don't think I don't know if I'd call goop a cult, but goop a number of the things that are toxic about goop are also things that are toxic about cults in the same way that like a number

of things that make you a successful stand-up comedian could also make you a good cult leader because certain these are these are patterns that can be in there. Yeah, I don't know. This is this is more of a discussion than I want to get into right now, but there's a lot that gets into why

cults are deeper than religion. Yeah, cults are about some things very hardwired in the human mind and I don't think that that hierarchy is hard wire. It's not even hardware. It's the wrong way to put it. We have been abusing each other using

systems of power for 10,000-ish years, if not much longer. And there's a reason why and it's because our brains are vulnerable to that in the same way that certain people's brains are vulnerable

to heroin or alcohol or whatever. Everyone's brains are vulnerable to cults. It just depends on finding the right cult. I think the reason that Christian cults are much more dangerous is in our societies because they have so much more political power

because there's so much more mainstream that makes it easier to hide, right? Because a lot of nexium gets busted up much quicker than Bill Gotherd does. But that's not anything inherent to religion. That's something inherent to the level of power we give that specific religion in our society.

It's more under an accepted umbrella. Yeah. Yeah, back to umbrellas. So Sean, you want to plug anything before we Yeah, I got me personally. I don't have like on myself. I don't do much on social media.

A couple of things I would like to plug that are just near and dear to me aside from, you know, Ted Wheeler, ever calling Ted Wheeler. Total RecallPDX.com There is a place in down by Los Angeles. It's LA Guinea Pig Rescue.

It can be LAGinnyPigRescue.com and they have like a YouTube channel. I have had four guinea pigs. I still have three with me. They're sweet little creatures. There's a thing they do called Pop Corning. It's like

they get super excited. It's like a full body joygasm. Oh, baby. And it's one of those things where it's like, with that, and I've had hamsters too, there's this people kind of think it's like, oh, it's it's a starter pet, like, because it's they're gentle or easy enough a kid can take

care of them. It's like, no, they're still complex creatures with big personalities and specific needs. So LAGinnyPigRescue. So kids get them and then can take, yeah, the turtle problem all over again. Yeah. And they have like one thing that people don't always realize with

guinea pigs is they are unlike hamsters where you can have them by themselves and they do their own little thing, guinea pigs are very social creatures to the point where there are there are laws in at least Belgium and Switzerland that like pet stores have to sell them in pairs. Oh, that's

fascinating. Because they get very, very depressed if they're by themselves. My kittens came in a pair and I would never split them up. And you know, it's like they have to and there's also you have to make sure they're bonding and this and that. But anyway, they do LAGinnyPigRescue does it's like 2000 to 2500

adoptions a year right now they're in a bit of a struggle because they just rescued almost 200 guinea pigs. Oh, was this like a pandemic? A lot of people. It was in North California. I want to say it was like someone that was like raising guinea pigs

to feed to pythons or they were or it was like you know, pythons food. Right, or they were like hoarding them or whatever, but they weren't taking care of them. They were not properly caring for them. And so to the point where there's a lot of them are special needs some may never be

adopted and they'll just be they'll make sure they're taking care of for the rest of their lives. But you know, it's like because they when they're mushed together, they were given the wrong food. So like they're messed up teeth they're their eyes missing because they get in fights and it's it's really bad.

So what is this place called again? LAGinnyPigRescue. Well, if you're help out the LAGinnyPigRescue. Yeah, and like I said, there's videos on that they have a YouTube channel and even if you're not in the LA area because you can volunteer

and help out there, even if you don't like are unable to send a couple bucks to help them just looking at the videos or like if you're going to get a guinea pig like looking at these because they're there because they want the animals to live their best lives. So

just informing yourself and being prepared and taking care of of the animals. It's kind of like you saw with the pandemic people got a lot of dogs and put them back. It's there's this I mean

people if you understand the concept of foie gras how terrible that is this is like emotional foie gras where you're just stuffing an animal with your sadness sadness to fill the hole to fill the hole inside yourself and it's like

that's it's it's not good going back to cycles of abuse and human behavior it's like it's just downcycling the abuse onto animals when they can be a huge source of unconditional love and helping you break out of your cycles they help me a lot with like depression anxiety stuff like that.

It's hard to be sad around a guinea pig. Yeah, so LA guinea pig rescue one other thing so there is a movie that came out it's about one hour it's a documentary came out in November 2020 it's called The Forgotten Battalion I have a friend

who I met through my brother when they were in high school he was in the Marines went and fought in Afghanistan last day there is like doing a like they're having him show the patrol

and they're like oh let's go down this way which is not a way they usually go so IED he has ended up losing both legs and it's so the the area where they were at and this is in 2008 in Afghanistan

it's about the size of Oregon I believe and they were past the supply lines they were past air support they were just left out there and why it's called The Forgotten Battalion is it has as far as I know and I hope this is true

because it's terrible news if it isn't the highest suicide rate in the armed forces is the average for the armed forces in like 14 times the average American Jesus but why I'm drawing people towards this so

Chris Bride that's the guy's name he amazing guy he's worked it's a very direct and blunt documentary about dealing with suicide

about dealing with the consequences of these words because he's very directed it's like yeah no I wake up and I want to kill myself every day but he is like he's anywhere he's been like San Antonio in the VA up here he was in Oregon for a while

the documentary is actually filmed on the Oregon coast he would always try to do stuff to kind of help out the other veterans he's doing this is like they went on like a fishing trip on the coast and it's basically they all get together they talk about it

it's been super super helpful for all the um um all the soldiers involved it's like a couple people that had worked with him wanted to do this documentary because of the change that he had been able to effect

and again it's it's very it's it's be it's not it's I feel like sometimes we we're not always as directed realistic and not in like a bleak terrible blunt sword but it just basically like no this is the reality this is how they deal with it yeah

um and so just kind of promoting the forgotten battalion the forgotten battalion you can find it on Apple or Amazon I would prefer Apple over Amazon just giving the company yeah you're picking yeah yeah this

yeah um Tim Apple hasn't gone to space yet so I generally agree with you there um yeah okay the forgotten battalion the LA guinea pig rescue and um check out total recall pdx especially if you're in the Portland area and you want to uh sign on to recall

our shitty mayor um Sean thank you so much for your donation uh for the episode idea and for uh helping me cut make bring it to life for the Frankenstein monster of sadness yeah all right well that is an episode

bam alphabet boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations in the first season we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests it involves a cigar smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse and inside his hearse

with like a lot of guns but our federal agents catching bad guys or creating them he was just waiting for me to set the date the time and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen listen to alphabet boys on the iHeart Radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast

the soviet union collapsing around him he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world listen to the last soviet on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts what if i told you that much of the

forensic science you see on shows like csi isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price two death sentences and a life without parole my youngest i was incarcerated two days after her

first birthday listen to csi on trial on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts