Hidden True Crime - JOSH DUGGAR VERDICT- IBLP, BILL GOTHARD and INSIGHTS INTO SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

With the documentary #ShinyhappyPeople making waves, Hidden True Crime revisits this podcast with Lauren Matthias and guest Shellie G. Shelli once attended a church that used IBLP’s materials and teachings. Our discussion takes us through #JoshDuggar’s guilty verdict and into discussions about Bill Gothard, Anna Duggar, women in the church, and childhood abuse. LAUREN MATTHIAS worked as an anchor and reporter for ABC, NBC, and FOX News in Boise, Idaho and Salt Lake City, Utah. She spent a decade reporting on a diverse range of topics from high profile crimes and criminals to Presidential visits. Most recently, she reported for Salt Lake City’s ABC affiliate News4Utah and in 2015 she received the Idaho State Broadcaster’s Association Best Reporter award and a continuing guest with News Nation. She is the producer and editor of the Hidden True Crime Podcast along with her husband Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist. Contact them at [e-mail] WEBSITE: https://hiddentruecrime.com/ TO SUPPORT: https://www.patreon.com/hiddentruecrime https://paypal.me/hiddentruecrime https://cash.app/$hiddenTruecrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It is Happiness Network from AGI Producter. Hey, gems, this is Lauren. And while we

were glad to reunite as a family after the Lori Valo Day Bell trial, I did have to leave town again

to be with my brother. He's in the ICU. We appreciate so much your thoughts, your prayers, your good vibes.

It means so much to us. Being a family run podcast, when life happens, you experience a bit of that with us. So we do apologize for missing last week's YouTube live and not posting as regularly here on our podcast. While I am doing some editing while in the hospital, we did want to take a break from

Daybell, Coburger, and Murdoch to play a December 2021 interview that we've yet to publish here, one that is very relevant with the release of the popular prime documentary, shiny, happy people. So our friend and Gem, Shelley, attended a church that used Bill Gothard's teachings and followed the Institute of Basic Life Principles, also known as IBLP in the film. So while my discussion with Shelley revolves around the Josh Dugger verdict, which had just come down when this interview was recorded, we do go much deeper into Bill Gothard, IBLP and Shelley's personal experiences in this episode.

We also talk about Bobby Holt, you'll notice. She is the Dugger friend who testified in the Josh Dugger trial, as well as plays a big part of the film, Shiny Happy People. Shelly ends with a hope in this episode that Josh Dugger's guilty verdict will allow more victims and survivors a voice and that they'll be able to bravely share it. Well, 18 months later, here we are. Shiny Happy People does just that. If you are interested in additional episodes about Josh Dugger, you can head to our Patreon,

patreon.com slash hidden true crime. There, Dr. John discusses Josh Dugger and his crimes. But we are also going to discuss the film together. And we invite Shelley to join us again with us. We hope to have all three of us on soon. Let us know your thoughts about this episode over on our Facebook page under comments. Facebook.com slash hidden true crime. Over there, I've shared a good amount of IBL teaching material and textbooks, and I'd love to know

your thoughts. As always, thank you for your good reviews. Thank you for being a loyal listener, and we'll be having some new episodes for you soon. I am with a guest today. Her name is Shelly G. This is not a daybell case update. We're hoping to discuss other important cases here at Hidden True Crime, and this is a case I've been wanting to understand and discuss the Josh Dugger case and his recent guilty verdict. Now, before we begin, a trigger warning, this episode will mention crimes against children. Josh Dugger was found guilty last week on federal charges. It was two counts of downloading and possessing child pornography, and he was found guilty

on both counts. Is that right, Shelly? Yes, it was two counts. One of the counts was stayed, the minor account was stayed, but the count for receipt of, I don't know if we can say it, so I'll just go with CP, one account of receipt of CP that can lead up to 20 years. Up to 20 years. Wow. And this was a very public case. This is a very public family, a very religious family, a self-proclaimed moral family, a political family in Arkansas. and Josh is a public figure in both the reality television world and in his political activism. Let's all remember he was the executive director of the FRC Action Pack, sponsored by the Family Research Council.

In other words, he once stated that his goal was taking the message of faith, family, and freedom across America until 2015. And I remember the multiple scandals in 2015. First, when Josh was discovered on the Ashley Madison site, a site for extramarital affairs, and Josh admitted to being unfaithful to his wife, Anna Dugger. Right. You want to know something ironic about that? The youngest daughter that they just had, the seventh baby that Anna and Josh Dugger had, they named her Madison. Okay, that's, that is very interesting.

I didn't. The one that she just gave birth to a month ago. Yeah. Yeah. After going through, you know, yeah. Yeah. They named her Madison. Yeah, I did not realize that I knew that she just gave birth, which makes this story all the more heartbreaking to her seventh child. It does. Yeah, I'm going to definitely be asking. That puts a weird psychological element into it, doesn't it? Yeah, I'm definitely going to be asking Dr. John about that one. It's not the direction I would have gone if we're in their shoes. And it was also in 2015 when it came out that back when Josh was a teenager, 14 and 15 years old, he was accused of molesting five young girls, which included his younger sisters.

So 2015 was not Josh Dugger's year, to say the least. But there were no charges. His crimes as a teenager seemed to have been swept under the rug, handled within the Dugger family, and the statute of limitations had passed. And what I mean is no charges until this year, 2021. And while these new charges he's been found guilty of are not molestation charges, the judge did allow testimony from a family friend who described his past crimes against his sisters. Is that right?

Right. I believe that there were three mentioned and then there was one minor that was not named. And we now know that that was Joy Anna. she was in the trial with her husband watching the case and when the testimony came up about her, what happened to her, she was visibly upset and her husband got very angry because they were told that it was like over the clothes and that it was while they were sleeping and it only happened once and they didn't know. The fact of the matter is he had been digitally raping her for a while during Bible studies. So she heard that for the first time in court and her husband did

too. They realized they had been lied about that this entire time. His youngest sister, Josh is younger sister, right? At the time, right. She had been told her whole life by her father, good old J.B. Jim Bob, he told her that it was really not that big of a deal. It was just a boy exploring things and that he'd felt her while she was sleeping just one time and it wasn't a big deal. well Josh confessed to people that it was actually that he digitally raped her while she was sitting on his lap during Bible study several times wow reading the Bible so that's why it's considered a rape charge yeah yep so not only did it affect her in every other way it affected hearing scripture and connecting it to that so she and her husband Austin are very very angry about it according to some of the other podcasters there that have been covering this case very closely. It sounds, you know, all this information is secondhand that I have right now, but it sounds like they're very upset. I know that Jill, who was one of the abused sisters, she's now married to Derek Dillard, and Jill and Derek

have spoken out many times against the Duggers. So, you know, there definitely, there's a few stepping out and standing up for what's right. But this particular case was about pornography. having child pornography. And the two counts were the first count was receipt and the second count was possession. Well, weirdly enough, possession seems to be the lesser charge and just receiving the pornography is a higher offense and dependent upon the ages of the children and mitigating factors, like the fact that Josh had molested his sisters previously, it can have up to a 20-year sentence. So that's what the trial was about, was about the child pornography that was seen. And I think as you and Dr. John have mentioned on a previous episode, it was some of the worst of what you can find on the internet.

Yes, that episode is on our Patreon account. When the charges came down, the 2021 charges, and we started talking about 2015, but now we're in, you know, 2021. And the pornography charges, as you pointed out, came down. John and I did do two episodes about the case. And you're right. Exactly. Some of the worst possible sex abuse against children material that you can find. That you can find on the dark net.

And it's not something, I've been doing a lot of research about this myself and heard a lot through the trial. It's actually not something that you can just access by accident. Like you have to have a partition to protect you from it. Sometimes you have to give something in order to get access to the file. You have to know exactly which directories to go to. It's something that it takes a level of definite criminal intent to get to the point where you receive these particular files. Wow. What you just said, you have to give something in order to get these files.

And so we can only speculate on what he might have done to receive the files. So to clarify what you said earlier, the reason these past accusations against his sisters were a part of Josh's trial is that they wanted to see a motive or a pattern. They wanted to see the pattern because that would play into the mitigating factors for the sentencing. If he had acted out in the past, that would be a mitigating factor that would cause a higher level sentencing. I haven't even really given you a great introduction, Shelley. Why don't you tell us a little bit about why you care about the Josh Dugger case and why you've been following this so closely? Yeah, I've been following this case for a while. I did not know the Dugger family myself, but I was raised by a woman who was a church hopper,

and we visited a lot of different churches. And in the process, I learned a lot about different religions. And there for a while, we landed at a little church in Oklahoma. city and it was called an independent fundamental Baptist church and they had a connection to another group that was kind of like over them and it was called the institute and basic life principles also known as the i b l p and if anyone has heard about the abuse allegations against bill gothirt Bill Gothard was the leader of the Institute in Basic Life Principles. I even homeschooled with some of their materials when my kids were little.

I mean, I'm not going to lie. I liked some of their stuff and I used some of their stuff and I didn't realize. I didn't realize how horrible it was. What do you mean by horrible? Very toxic home environments, just defining roles in a way that kept women from being able to have a voice that put so much pressure on men to only be a certain way, that if they were sensitive, that they might be homosexuals, and then they might have to be converted.

I mean, it was just, it was just really gross. I mean, some of the stuff was basic Bible study, and that was fine, but it seemed like everything was teaching you how to be a good wife, and that your only value came if you were a wife that had many, many children. Well, my mother was a single mother, who worked and I had no brothers and sisters. So I did not really fit into this community.

But I think that they wanted me to, I think they wanted to try to turn me into a project or something. So they gave me my anti-makeover, which meant that I grew my hair long. And I went to some thrift stores and got some denim skirts and, you know, some sneakers. And they taught me how to do my hair where, you know, the half up, half down, higher the hair,

the closer to God kind of thing going on and started getting involved there. And it was just at first, they love Baum you and they make you feel accepted and special. And I'm a seeker. I'm a truth seeker and I love scripture. Everybody's scriptures. Like I just love to learn in general. And they did a lot of studying. And I like that. I like the fact that they went deep and that they talked about deep things. But then there was so much hate. There was just so much hate and it became less about what the Bible said than what they thought about the Bible. And I heard them make fun of political figures and celebrities. They had a thing against Oprah too, by the way. Really, this is a trend. It's a trend, yes. She was considered like super, super evil. And then I remember there's a Christian.

singer named Sandy Patty and they this this independent fundamental Baptist church which is what the Dugger family is part of this this whole community they didn't even like listening to like regular Christian music it had to be this Maranatha Baptist like this very vocal group type music it couldn't be just like regular Christian music or rock music you know it had to be a very certain type of music, choral music. But there was a singer at the time, I'm aging myself here, but there was a Christian gospel singer named Sandy Patty. And she ended up having an affair. And the church kind of cast her out from the whole thing. And she was trying to come back. You know, she was trying to say, like, I made mistakes and I'm, you know, I'm asking for forgiveness.

And this church would call her Fatty Patty Patty. And, you know, we don't want to be going down to hell like fatty patty's going to and just really I've never seen the kind of hate and vitriol that was spouted at this place and then they had youth conferences where they would send us with all the other families from accompanying states which Arkansas you know is one of those states and I may have met a dougar and never knew it at one of these youth conferences it's possible but the conferences were terrifying I remember they would have a a whole bunch of the young men do the preaching, not the actual preachers, but young men. In suits, you know, all the guys had to have shortcut hair.

They couldn't have long hair because that looked like you were a homosexual. Oh, wow. This is what they said. And ladies could not, we couldn't put our hair up, like up in a top knot or anything because our necks were too sexual and that would make them fall. Next. And of course we couldn't wear pants or anything. Yeah, next.

next were too sensuous. And that could cause our brother to stumble. When you say that long hair wasn't okay because it made you look homosexual and then you said they actually said that, when you say they actually said that, do you mean they actually said that? Yes. Yes. Okay.

Can I tell you a short story about that? There was a young man that I was going to school with who was just a regular guy. And I guess he liked me a little bit. you know, I don't know. And I was trying to be the good little Christian girl. And I was like, you know, he asked me if I would go on a date with him. And I was like, well, if you come to my church, I'll think about it. So he came.

He drove his bicycle, because we were like 13 at the time. He drove his bicycle like five or six miles down a main road to get to my church, to come to my church. They asked him to leave because he had a skater haircut. Oh, geez. And they were like, now Shelly, you know, he has some homosexual tendencies and you need to stay away from him. That's demonic. Wow. Wow.

And he was the nicest guy. And I just thought, you know, I just remember collecting these thoughts. Like at this point, I didn't believe anything that they had to say. But I was just, I felt like it was important to witness it if that makes any sense. A lot of people say that the Duggers are evangelical. other say they're baptists, but you're trying to explain that this is what they were a part of. Can you explain how this is the Duggers organization or church? Yes.

They're the IBF. So they're the independent Baptist or the IF, IFB, the independent fundamental Baptists. And this isn't just Baptists. No. Regular mainstream Baptists, which are usually under the Southern Baptist Convention, The whole big umbrella they're under is the American Baptists. They are actually considered Protestants, not evangelicals. People don't know that, but that's true.

American Baptists are actually considered Protestants. And under American Baptist, there's several different types of Baptists. You have your Southern Baptists, you have your Free Will Baptists, your Antioch Baptists. I mean, there's just different ones within that, but they're all. under that same American Baptist Protestant umbrella. But, and they all have some regulation between them, you know, some are a little bit more radical. Some are pretty weak, tea, you know, kind of just general stuff. But this group, they have no oversight.

Being an independent Baptist, they get to just say, I can set up my church however I want. So all the independent Baptists get together, but they don't make their own creed that everything goes by because each church is different. That's why Westboro Baptist Church is an independent fundamental Baptist church. It's one that doesn't have anything to do with the Institute in Basic Life principles because they don't want them there because there's so much trouble, but it is an independent fundamental Baptist church. And to remind people about what Westboro Baptist churches, they would often come to funerals to spout their anti-gay rhetoric. Is that correct, Shelley? Right, right. Fred Phelps and Shirley Phelps.

And yeah, that family, it's a Kansas church that just likes to go and basically tell everybody all the different ways they're going to hell. And is that what you mean by the church that accepted you? You learned was full of hate? Was it similar to that? Yes. Yes. It was very full of. of hate. Their two favorite things to talk about were women that were quote unquote horrors and

homosexuals and how they're going to burn in hell. And they used the derogatory term. They used the F word from the pulpit to refer to people who were engaged in a loving homosexual relationship. Wow. Wow. So take us back into you being a part of this church and How long were you a part of it? I was a part of it for about three years. I went to a couple of their camps and a couple of things. I was never fully embedded into it because I didn't, my family didn't believe in it. I mean, I would just go for some of the fun, like, teen activities that weren't all that

fun. But, I mean, you know, I had a friend group and that, and my particular friends weren't super radical. And it felt good to be different than the rest of the world. You know, there's something that makes you feel good to stay. stand out and not be doing something that the rest of the world is doing. I think it really lends to a feeling of self-righteousness like you're better than other people. And I think that's why the rules are in place because if you're not going to get bullied, you go the opposite direction and you

start feeling like, well, I'm too good. They can bully me all they want because they're just jealous. You know what I mean? It creates this sense of self-righteousness and being better than people. and that's what keeps a lot of the people there is they don't want to just be regular people that have regular problems and are centers. It's much easier to think of themselves as more righteous. That way they can look down and yell at everyone else. With that being said, let's go back to the Dugger case and the trial. Would you say that this experience of yours is why you followed the case so closely? Definitely. I was very eager to see if the truth would be called out and I also have been watching the family members because I know that some of those girls

and I hope some of the boys too will break away from the toxic patriarchal headship toxicity that exists in these communities and they have much more political power than anyone realizes. You know, the word evangelical didn't even start to become a thing until we had the contract with America in the 90s, which was a political thing. That is when this church or this community, this group, they really gained a lot of political power with the likes of Newt Gingrich and people like that that helped them built up Jerry Faldwell. Now Jerry Faldwell, with Liberty University and stuff like that, they're American Baptists, but the political power that both have goes across both American Baptist and the independent fundamental Baptists, but they're not the same

thing. It gets very, very confusing. They get the same political support and they have the same political goals, but they don't look the same. American Baptist dressed normally. They'll go to, you know, old-fashioned ones won't go to dances, but you wouldn't know like a Baptist church from any other church. But the word Baptist, because of the fact that separatist, because of the fact that separation of church and state came from a letter that was written from Thomas Jefferson to the Dan Barry Baptists saying that that wall would be a separation to protect the Baptists, the Danforth Baptists, the whole American Baptist group, they are all politically involved more than any other. So when people talk about evangelicals and politics, it's actually the Baptists

that have the biggest political arm. The whole evangelical Baptist thing just became new. That started in kind of the 90s and 2000s. That's the American Baptist, but not the independent Baptist. Yes, but see, the independent Baptist sprung from the American Baptist Church. That's where they started, and then they broke themselves off as an independent version of. An offshoot. Right, exactly.

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down guilty. I think a lot of people watching from afar were like, well, yes, of course. It's going to be guilty. But in talking to you, you seemed a little bit more surprised. Is that fair to say? Yeah, there were a lot of people within religious communities that were afraid he was going to get off because it was Arkansas and because Jim Bob, Dugger, Josh's father, well, Jim Bob is running for state senate in Arkansas. And they've been utilized. political power in that area for a long time. And Jim Bob has been known to shut people down, to get people fired, to kind of like a mob guy in a religious way, I guess. So a lot of people thought because the case was in Fayetteville, Arkansas, that there was no way that he was,

they just thought there was no way Josh was going to actually get convicted. So this conviction was really important because it really, really opened up the door for people to come forward and say, this happened to me. The fact that they allowed the testimony that detailed what Josh had done to his sisters and the fact that his parents knew about it, they knew about it, they sent him away to a rehab center to be taught by a guy who ended up in prison for the same thing. So, you know, they're culpable for this. They're culpable for this too. And I've heard a lot of people say that because Jim Bob lied on the stand during this particular trial, when they asked him what he remembered about what his son did, he lied.

And that could prompt a trial over him. So we'll see. But it meant so much. It meant so much to people who have been survivors of independent Baptist church toxicity and making you feel voiceless, making you feel like you, like a guy touching you inappropriately is your fault because you decided to wear jeans that day. You know what they said about jeans? We couldn't wear jeans because the way jeans looked were an arrow straight up to our crotch. Oh, wow. So you were choosing. If the guy looks at your pants, it's an arrow straight up there. Who told you that? Who told you that? The pastor of the church

that I was going to. Wow. And they said that at the youth conferences also when they were telling us how to dress. Would they tell you this in front of the boys as well? Or was it they separate you? Yep, we set it together. Nope. But were boys allowed to wear the jeans? Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm.

They were just told to have clean cut hair. You know, like my little skater guy who came to visit me, he was not acceptable because he had shaggy skater hair. The boys had to have their hair cut very, very, very short, and they had to wear suits or pants tucked in. they couldn't wear, you know, just they couldn't be messy or wear shorts or t-shirts. So how did you decide to move on from this? Well, I just wasn't a very good one.

I asked too many questions. I like jeans. I think that when everybody started paring off, you know, figuring out who is going to marry who, because there's a lot of semi-arranged marriages in this culture. You basically go to the youth things so the families can meet one another. and the kids can start courting. They don't get married, they court. And I just...

And courting means essentially it almost is like an arranged marriage. They almost shake hands and decide they're going to get married. Is that right? And then they can't kiss until they actually are married? So I'm asking this because Josh and Anna Dugger have actually stated that they did not kiss until they were married. Well, there are different versions of it. I mean, I held on to some of these beliefs for a long time when I raised my children. and my son met a girl when he was 14 and they they had a courtship but what that was was it was like

they were dedicated to one another they had an intent to they knew that they cared enough about each other to like intend towards marriage at some point so they spent time like investing in a lot of questions to get to know each other and our families would meet up with each other because we wanted to support them as they grew into a couple. It didn't work well. When they ended up breaking up, all of our families were sad because we were used to seeing each other all the time. And it's kind of like a little pseudo family. It's like a little pseudo-family, married family, but they're not. They're 14. You know, it's strange. So that's the way the culture is, is they, two kids will meet each other at a conference. The parents will support the kids by going back and forth, but they always,

have a chaperon. I didn't do the chaperone stuff. And then eventually, you know, kids will date for a few years and they'll get married about 18. Where are you now religiously? Oh man, that's a long story. I've ran the gamut with a lot of different religions. Where I'm at right now is that I love the Lord my God with all my heart, all my soul, and all my strength. And I love my neighbors myself. And everything else is kind of in pencil. I'm just figuring it out as I go along. but I do believe in the divine. I also believe that a lot of people have their version of the divine is not correct and because of that it hurts a lot of people but I also think a lot of people in religion are well-intentioned and their hearts are well-intentioned but sometimes they're not

and when you have a wolf around a lot of lambs a lot of lambs get you know a lot of lambs get attacked. Thankfully, I'm out of any organized situation. You know, I've taken bits and pieces of faiths along the way that I felt like worked. I thought courting had a lot of good aspects and that, you know, the kids had dated with intention or the family support of it. But then I saw it not work. So it was like, okay, we'll try something else. So there's not a lot of owning it when it doesn't go well in these communities. I also wanted to explain. I've heard people talk about the Duggers as being a quiverful family. And I wanted to talk just a second. Please, that's a question I have. Yeah. So quiverful is just any faith that encourages not utilizing birth control. So you can have independent Baptist,

you know, independent fundamentalist Baptist quiverful families. You can have, you can have, Church of Christ, Quiverful families, there's a lot of them, and that's where the Debbie Pearls and the Michael Pearls, if you've heard of them, to train up a child and the abuse allegations that go with that, they are Church of Christ offshoot. Seventh, they have a quiverful movement. Messianic Jews have a quiverful movement. Quiverful is not its own thing. In fact, it was a name that was used to kind of make fun of the large families. So out of the verse that says, Blessed is the man. who has many children that his quiver is full of them.

I'm paraphrasing that, but that's basically what it says. You know, so it's any faith that might not feel like using birth control should be part of their faith walk. You could be quiverful in a different faith. Being quiverful does not equal what the duggers are. That makes sense. That's basically what they believe. I mean, it comes in all different shapes and sizes, but the main belief there is that they

want to have as many children as they feel like God will bless them with. It's a belief or a philosophy, not a religion. Correct. As you point out, the Duggers are in politics. They've tried to cover up some secrets in their family. They've been on a reality show. They're public figures. I mean, Jim Bob is running for Senate in Arkansas right now.

They have many children, to say the least. How many kids do they even have now? I stopped counting 20-something. No, they have 19. 19. Oh, okay. So they didn't get to 20. But right. But a lot of the kids have so many kids now that it's hard to keep track. Right. So a lot of people will say there can be a bad egg and a good family and that a family can only do so much, especially a family like the Duggers with so many children. But do you feel the specific culture within this family and their religion is also to blame for Josh Dugger and his crimes?

Yes, 100%. I'm sure that there are some good people. within that family, but the family ideology what drove that family leads to all kinds of hidden problems. The pastor of the church that I went to ended up being arrested for a sexual assault issue. I don't know all the details of it, but, and three of the other youth ministers were also arrested for different kinds of sexual abuse situations. So clearly, it's a toxicity in this belief system. I personally believe it's based on the level of repression that they have. I mean, women, again, can't show their necks. Men can't look at women's necks. They can't look at jeans. They can't look at any pictures of a woman in a, in a magazine that might be wearing underwear or a bikini. I mean, there's just, and you're repressing a human nature instead of teaching a person how to control it. You know, it's just, it's going to have consequences. You, you add a criminal mind into the mix and you get a lot of victims. So, you know, this is a religion that draws men who like power, that like to use power over women. The women are trained

to be compliant, to be obedient. And then if you throw in a few people who just were born with criminal minds, you know, that just think that way for whatever reason, it's a recipe for disaster. I also blame Josh himself, too, you know, I don't think he's a victim that much. He knew when he had every opportunity to say, I need to do something else. I need to be away from this family. He went, he went several steps over what was necessary to do what he did. And I think that goes into criminal intent rather than being a victim. That's always a fine line, you know, but I think he crossed it. Yeah, Dr. John on our hidden true crime, Patreon account did say what could have happened had they pressed charges as a juvenile. If people had charged Josh for the sexual abuse against

young girls when he was a child and he was in the juvenile system, he could have likely gotten the help that he needed. It was a heartbreaking episode to listen to because I knew, you know, I knew where this was coming, what was going to happen, what was coming to a head. And I it just breaks my heart because the fear of being considered less than perfect by the parents, namely Jim Bob, I will name him all day long because he's going to get his name out there for to become a senator. I'll get his name out there for aiding and abetting his criminal son. He didn't do what he should have done because he didn't want anything on the record that could

affect their family's contract with TLC. And in doing so, he made his son worse. I posted the guilty verdict on our hidden true crime Twitter account and Kim Chapman responded and she said, I thought I would feel different about the verdict, but I feel sad. Those kids and even Anna, Josh's wife and her seven children, considering her role as wife in their church, it's just heartbreaking. I'm glad he got convicted. That was a big win, but the damage everywhere is.

just sad. And I was just curious your thoughts about that while we celebrate a guilty verdict and justice for children who are abused, you have now a mother with seven children who will be raising them without their father. I just wanted to know your thoughts on that. Well, I have trouble when it comes to Anna. And I, you know me well enough, Lauren, that you know that I'm, I can pretty much find compassion, empathy for about anybody that I come in contact with. But I struggle with her because she knew, in 2015, she knew that he had molested young girls. And she continued to have seven children with him, seven. And then when he got indicted for this and he was going to trial, they asked, you know, we really think it would be good to talk to the kids because usually

people don't get the particular file, the pornography file that Josh got. They usually don't get that unless they have traded something for it so that there's mutual culpability if someone gets caught. So you usually trade one for one. And so they knew it was important to interview the kids. Anna refused. She refused to have her children. interviewed when her husband admitted that he'd seen this, you know, he's admittedly cheated, he's admittedly molested children, and now he's being accused of watching child pornography

for children as young as three months old, and you're going to refuse to have your children interviewed for their own safety? I did not know that that she had refused to have her children interviewed. Now that he's been convinced, been convicted, it may not be a choice for her anymore, and it's not going to work well for her the fact that she refused. Why would, why would she refuse? If she felt like everything was okay, why? Why would you refuse that? I understand it's an uncomfortable situation, but if it was me,

if it was my husband that was on trial, oh, I want to know if there's anything that was done to my babies, you know? So I do feel sorry that she is so brainwashed, but I've seen enough of her in this that she, she is very steeped in believing that Josh is not guilty and that she is just completely embedded into the Dugger cult. The kids, however, my heart breaks for them because they don't need, you know, they don't need to know that they're, what their dad is in prison for. Their family is going to be broken up. They might be separated. The good thing is with these big families, you know, it's possible that the kids will go live with someone like Jill and Derek who are really breaking out of the cult, you know. So there's good possibilities for the kids, but my heart still breaks for them

because it's such a shameful thing. But I just hope, I hope that somehow they're able to see that their real father, their real father freed them by locking away their false one. When you said Jill and Derek, you mean Jill Dugger, who, now and her husband, Derek, are breaking away from the cult. You mentioned to me a scripture they shared. Yeah, let me grab that. My version was the new living translation. They're pretty fond of good old King James. That's a big thing with the independent fundamental Baptists. They love their King James version of the Bible. So does the Church of Jesus Christ, Lattery Saints, they study from the King James version? See, I've done a lot of studies about where the, oh, it doesn't matter.

There's just contradictions in all of them. I like new living. I feel really comfortable with that one. It's Luke 817. For all that is secret will eventually be brought into the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all. And did Jill share that when it comes to her brother? Josh? Well, it appeared as though she shared it. Yeah, she shared it after the conviction. And it was, it seemed to be pointed to both Josh and her father because her father blamed her for the whole thing. He said that Jill lying about being abused is what led to this whole thing. The victim shamed her.

So, so that is shocking to me. It seems like he's essentially choosing his son over his daughter, who's the victim. Let's go back to Anna then for a second. Anna Dougger, Josh's wife. You know, I have to acknowledge that Anna, Josh's wife, was raised in this. You do mention that she's, there's a bit of brainwashing your words. A lot of people want to give her empathy because she was raised to stand by her man, no matter what. In fact, let me read you something. This is something that a woman named Jessica Kirkland wrote.

She is a mom from Georgia, and she wrote this on her Facebook page back in 2015, in reference to Josh Dugger being on Ashley Madison and the accusations of abuse against the young girls. And she says, let's talk about Anna. Let me tell you, Anna Dugger is in the worst position she could possibly be in right now. Anna Dugger was crippled by her parents by receiving no education, having no work experience, or life experience for that matter, and then she was shackled to this loser because his family was famous in their religious circle. Anna Dugger was taught that her sole purpose in life, the most meaningful thing she could do was to be a chaste and proper, a devout wife, and a mother.

Anna Dugger did that. Anna Dugger followed the rules that were imposed on her from the get-go, and this is what she got in reward. A husband who she found out in the span of six months not only molested his own sisters, but was unfaithful to her in the most humiliating way possible. While she was fulfilling her duty of providing him with four children and raising them, she lived up to the standard that men set for her of being chased and godly, and in return, the man who demanded this of her sought women who were the opposite. Be this, they told her. She was, it wasn't enough. What is Anna Dugger supposed to do?

She can't divorce because the religious environment she was brought up in would blame her and ostracize her for it. Even if she would risk that, she has no education and no work experience to fall back on. So how does she support her kids? From where could she summon the ability to turn her back on everything she ever held to be sacred and safe? Her beliefs, the very thing that she would turn to for comfort in this kind of crisis, are the very reason she is in this predicament in the first place. How can she reconcile this? Her parents have utterly utterly failed her. Think of this. Somewhere, Anna Dugger is sitting in prayer, praying not for the strength to get out and stand on her own, but for the strength to stand by this man she is

unfortunately married to, to lower herself so that he may rise up on her back. That is, of course, clearly an opinion piece, and it was written six years ago well before we knew anything more and before she chose to stand by him and have three more children with him. But I'd love your thoughts. I hurt for what made Anna. But I'm going to be really candid and I don't mean to make anything about myself here or anything like that. But I went through a lot too. I was raised by a woman, but a very, very broken woman who taught me

patriarchal attitudes, even though it was a matriarchal home, and basically made me feel like I was worth nothing. And I did not use that as an excuse to, I didn't, it didn't make me go, okay, I will never critically think. I was raised in several different cults. There was this one that I mentioned to you today, also the word of faith cult, which is a well-known cult. And I've been, I've seen preachers like Benny Hinn and Jimmy Swagger in person who walked my grandma who had a disease like across the stage and pretend like she was healed and you know just all kinds of stuff um I dealt with some not full on sexual abuse but some pretty some some definitely uncomfortable touching and some uncomfortable situations with youth pastors at church and stuff like that I was raised in

purity culture to feel like if I had sex before I was married that I was worthless and first sexual experience was a date rape situation from someone in my church that I trusted. Then I couldn't tell anybody, felt like I had to marry him, and it was a terrible situation. I didn't end up marrying him. His father, or his father, his uncle, who was a missionary, came to the church and told him, I wasn't worth marrying because he slept with me first. He didn't know that the guy raped me. He just said, you know, well, she's not pure.

you don't need to marry her. So it saved me from that situation, but I've seen it. I've seen, I've seen these things in all different shades. And it comes to the point where you don't get to have an excuse anymore. You don't get to keep believing it. Anna's smart. She knows what she needs to do. She has said it. The reason why she had those next three babies was to try to lock him down. Or if she wasn't going to lock him down, she was going to make sure she had enough kids that the Dugger were going to be paying for the rest of her life. You know, she knows what she's doing. And I do feel bad for her, but the fact that she refused to make sure that her children were safe,

to just be interviewed to find out if they had been molested, there's no excuse for that. There's no excuse to not get your child tested for that. So it's those later decisions that Anna has made. Do I fault her for trying to stand by her husband and be loyal? No. Do I fault her for doing it when she is casting aside her children to do so? Yes. God gave her those children. Thank you for sharing that. With that, actually, I just read part of that. Facebook post from Jessica Kirkland in 2015. I appreciate your thoughts on it. With that, I'd like to finish reading it if that's okay. Sure. I think that what she says in conclusion is important. I know it helped me, actually, the reason I still have this quote is because it helped me when I was in a bad relationship. So Jessica, Curtlin concludes, as mothers of daughters, this makes me ill. Parents, we must do better by our daughters. Boys and men are born with power. Girls have to command it for themselves. if they aren't given it. They assume it and take it,

but you have to teach them to do it, that they can do it. We have to teach our daughters that they are not beholden to men like this, that they don't have to marry a man, their father deems acceptable, and then stay married to that man long, long after he proved himself unacceptable.

Educate them, empower them, give them the tools they need to survive on their own if they must. Josh Dugger should be cowering in fear of Anna Dugger right now, cowering. He isn't. but he should be. He should be quaking in fear that the house might fall down around him

if he's in the same room as she is. Please, instill in your daughters the resolve to make a man cower if she must to say, I don't deserve this and my children don't deserve this. I wish someone had ever just once told Anna she was capable of this, that she knew she is. As for my daughters, I'll raise them to think they breathe fire. It's great stuff. I read that because I feel like what you're saying is that this is perhaps where the culture failed a lot of people. Not that we're excusing Josh. Josh did what he did, but a lot of people enabled him to do what he did. Right. And an excellent point was made in that reading as well about the mothers building up their own daughters. In this, in this culture, the mothers tear down their daughters. They think

they're building them up by telling them everything they need to do to be a wife and neglecting everything that they need to do to do whatever career field they might want. I remember I was talking to a mother along, you know, in this belief system one time. And she said, it's my goal for all my girls to know how to run the house by age 13. And I thought, what about the boys? You know, what about the boys? And so yes, the men do wield the power, but so do we, ladies. So do we. So do we. and I guess that's where my thing with Anna goes is she should have been taught but now she's a woman and now she has the opportunity to teach her daughters to breathe fire and if she doesn't that's that's a purposeful thing that keeps going it's going to keep a cycle going and we as women

are powerful enough to raise daughters to stand up to their fathers to stand up to their brothers and it's our job to do it. It's not our job. Yeah, I mean, if we want to teach them to cook, if we want to teach them to do whatever, but also teach them to climb trees and, you know, everything else that they need to do, learn to code computers and my daughter is becoming a firefighter, you know, like, teach them to be brave and wonderful and at the same time be great wives and mothers. Yeah, which comes naturally when you're a great woman.

Right. Yes. Just by being a good one. woman, you're going to be the best at what you, you're going to put the best into everything that you do. And your worth comes from your existence. That's where your worth comes from. It doesn't come from how many children you can birth. It doesn't come from how well you can put dinner on the table or how quickly or how many frozen meals you have in your freezer. It doesn't come from if your house looks Instagram ready. It comes from being the best woman you are and just loving fiercely your children.

What do you hope comes out of this guilty verdict for the future? When I look at this verdict, you know, a lot of people say, well, he hasn't even been sentenced yet. It doesn't seem like that big of a verdict. It was just one count. But it meant the world to me. And this is why. To me, it means that the victims, all of them, all of them, everyone that he physically touched, everyone that he allowed to be victimized by what he watched, his wife, his children, the rest of his family, all the fallout, all the victims. The victims have a voice now. It means that people who

believe in God can begin to separate toxic and damaging religion from actual spirituality that heals and uplifts. It says that small town political power can be broken and that it's time. It's time for the church in all of its forms to self-reflect and they need to look at how to clean their own houses before picking up and casting their stones. It's time to take what is hidden and walk it into the light. Kids are not messed up if they have sexual urges. They are not dirty, horrible, or worthless. Perhaps if religion made more time to build up their value as a soul

rather than their body parts, these things would not be so prevalent. This verdict, a verdict given by the Dugger's peers in Arkansas, this huge verdict, this verdict says that it is time. It's time for these changes. It's time. You asked what I hope, you know, what comes of this trial? I hope people feel safe to tell their story and are able to speak their truth and

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