Law&Crime Sidebar - Joseph Duggar Begs to See Kids Amid Sex Assault Case

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

Former reality TV star Joseph Duggar is begging a court to let him see his children. At the same time, he wants to question Florida investigators regarding charges that he sexually molested a 9-year-old girl during a family vacation. Meanwhile, he and his wife, Kendra, face separate misdemeanor charges in Arkansas for endangering the welfare of a minor and false imprisonment. Law&Crime's Jesse Weber discusses these dual legal battles and how they might impact each other with criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor Matt Mangino.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can start your claim in just a click without having to leave your couch: https://forthepeople.com/LCSidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea, Alex Ciccarone, & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrimeTwitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Joseph Dugger is begging the court to let him be with his kids, while at the same time getting approval by the court to question the investigators in his child sexual abuse case out of Florida. We want to get into all of these new legal developments in the case of the former reality TV show star, now accused of child molestation. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Look, if you've been following us here on Sidebar, you know we've been covering this story. from the very beginning, every update. And the reason we can do that, the reason we can stay on top of a story like this

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Okay, so we got some updates in the Joseph Dugger criminal cases that we want to get into. And we know that Joseph Dugger is not only trying to see his kids, which we'll talk about, but now he also has a chance to question the investigators that were looking into claims that he molested a young girl. Now, I'm going to explain all this, okay? Because first, let me set the stage. Before we even break all that down, Joseph Dugger, you know, one of the members of the Dugger clan, rose to fame with the TLC show 19 kids in counting. Featured him, his wife, the family. He's been charged in Florida with felony counts of lewd and lascivious molestation of a victim under 12 years old and lewd in lascivious behavior by a person 18 years or older for allegedly sexually abusing

a nine-year-old girl during a family vacation back in 2020. Now, the issue for him, in which we'll talk about more, is that he allegedly confessed during a phone call with the alleged victim's father and a detective. At the same time, he and his wife, 27-year-old Kendra, are also facing charges out in Arkansas. You see, apparently, as part of an ongoing investigation, authorities there charge them with misdemeanor counts, four counts of endangering the welfare of a minor second degree, and four counts of false imprisonment second degree. Now, to be clear, those Arkansas charges are not directly related to what Joseph is accused of doing and what he's facing in Florida. It's

different. What are these Arkansas charges about? We're not entirely sure. We can't 100% confirm. They may be related to this reporting of alleged locks on their kids' doors in their house, on the exterior of the doors. We know the couple has four kids, but we can't confirm that. What I can tell you is that there was this news release from the Haunted Town Police Department that says this remains an active and ongoing investigation. Arkansas law strictly limits the information that may be released in cases involving minors and other sensitive circumstances to protect the integrity of the investigation and the privacy

of those involved. No further details will be provided at this time. By the way, both have pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Okay, so there are multiple developments. to talk about. And for that, I'm bringing on Matt Mangino, criminal defense attorney, former prosecutor. Matt, always good to see. You actually did double duty. You were just on court TV. Now came on here. Thank you for being so generous with your time. It's good to see you. Thank you. Okay. So first update I want to get into is that a judge has approved Joseph Dugger's request to

question the investigators in the Florida case. So the representatives of the Department of Children and Families, the Child Protection Team, the Children's Advocacy Center. They all have to sit for depositions. Matt, is this a big deal? Is this a big win for him? Well, I think it is a big deal, especially in terms of the depositions.

You know, it's not uncommon in criminal cases for discovery requests to be made. You want to review all the reports. You want to review all the documents. And that's standard practice. In this situation, it's taken it a step further in terms of discovery. giving you an opportunity to depose these witnesses before trial.

And that's really a bonus for a defense attorneys to actually have this testimony available to review and even to prepare for the defense in this case. So discovery is normal. Depositions are a bit unusual. A lot of questions I have for this. Number one, if they sit for depositions, anything they say, when they testify at a trial, they can be questioned about, right? So they can be, well, you're saying this on the stand now.

You said this in the deposition. You can impeach their credibility through what they say in depositions. And by the way, just to be clear, there's not always depositions in criminal cases like you're explaining, right? Well, yeah. I mean, you know, as a criminal defense attorney, there's nothing I like better than having a witness's testimony already. So an example might be a witness testifies any preliminary hearing or a pretrial hearing. I have that testimony available to me. If they testify a trial inconsistent with what they said under oath prior to that,

that's some good material to use to impeach the credibility of that way. To tell the jury, hey, you know, this person has testified inconsistently in the past, you can disregard everything that they said now. Talk to me about the first of all, again, I have more questions about what the strategy would be here. But I thought one of the complications is that it's not. always a given in these kinds of cases that these agencies, these investigators will be allowed to sit for depositions because of confidentiality laws. I mean, am I wrong about that? If you're dealing with these kinds of cases of alleged child abuse, aren't there confidentiality laws

that could be an issue in terms of what is handed over, what they can testify to, what they can speak about? Am I looking at it the wrong way? No, I think you're right on. And that's what makes this a bit unusual. For instance, one of the things that they're going to be able to do is to depose the forensic examiner. And that's a person who's typically called in by law enforcement in the district attorney's office to conduct a forensic examination of the victim in this case. A child. Yeah, the child. And so now you're going to be able to not only have what the child said at the forensic interview, but how that child was questioned. And so now you have an ability to both to attack the credibility and believability not only of the child based on that forensic interview,

but also the person who conducted that interview. Was there any bias? And that's what you're really looking at here. Was this child directed to answer these questions through this forensic interview? I mean, that's great stuff if you're a defense attorney. What's an example of that? What would be improper? What would be a line of questioning that you would say you kind of, I guess the argument is you fed this accuser, this child accuser. You fed them an answer. You led them a certain way. Like, what's an example of that?

What are they going to be looking out for in terms of this interview? Because let me be clear about something. And the judge said, you know, the agencies have to hand over to the defense all the evidence that the prosecution could use in the case. TMZ reporting that this could be videos and audio recordings and reports and physical evidence. And so imagine there is a recorded forensic interview of this accuser. What's a prime area that could be problematic for the prosecution? Well, a prime area in a situation like this. And if we think about a courtroom setting, for instance, you know, you call a witness,

whether it's the prosecution or the defense. And sometimes when you're dealing with child victims, it's a little different. But you can't ask, you know, leading questions to a witness, your own witness. Your witness has to testify. What could happen or may have happened in this forensic interview, one thing I'm looking for are leading questions. So all you're getting out of this victim is yes, no, yes, he did, no, he did. That's leading that witness to a specific answer that you want.

So you're basically intervening as the person who's testifying. They're just agreeing with you. And I think that is an example of how. you know, bias can seep into a forensic interview. By the way, just to be clear, are these interviews normally taped, fully audio, visual, the forensic interviews? In my experience, they are. You know, when I was a prosecutor, we created a child agency center so that we could do these types of forensic interviews. And this was a couple of decades ago. But, you know, one of the premises is that, that you tape these and that there's no accusation that, you know, you're dreaming up these

charges or you're embellishing these charges. You want that tape of the forensic interview. How do you challenge a reported 14-year-old's account of them being allegedly molested when they were nine years old? Now, again, let's be clear. He's innocent until proven guilty, hasn't been found guilty of anything. These are just allegations. But as a defense attorney, how do you prepare that? I guess there's two parts of this, right? Right? Is there a way you can challenge the credibility of this child accuser in a way where the charges can be thrown out even before trial? And B, how do you take all this information and potentially use it to challenge this accuser in court? Because I have to imagine if this goes to trial, this, you know, accuser is going to have to testify, right?

Well, I agree, Jesse. And that's an important question that you asked. if I'm a defense attorney, I'm doing everything in my power to try to get this case dismissed before it gets the trial. So I'm challenging the victim's statements in pretrial hearings. I'm using the information that I gleaned from these depositions and other reports. And I'm trying to go full force to challenge the victim's credibility before we ever get the trial. Because once you get the trial, it becomes a very delicate situation when you have a child victim. It's not like you're going to go into that courtroom and pound your fist on the table and go at that child. You got to do that work before you ever get into the courtroom and hopefully do it well enough to get the charges dismissed based on that.

You know, when you get the trial and you're sitting there with a 14-year-old girl who, it's alleged, was, you know, molested when she was nine years old, you're going at it with kit gloves and you're trying to find a way, you know, not to go after this witness, but at the same time convince a jury that maybe her recollection isn't what it appears to be. Interviewing all these investigators, you know, conducting depositions, reviewing all this evidence, how is Joseph Dugger and his defense team going to use that to challenge his alleged confession? I mean, arguably the most important piece of evidence in this case or potential evidence, because reportedly Joseph confessed to this alleged victim's father. They say on March 17th, this is according to a copy of the arrest warrant.

that was filed by the Bay County Sheriff's Office in Florida. Apparently, the next day, March 18th, the alleged victim, now 14 years old, sits down for that forensic interview like we've been talking about with the detective in Arkansas, quote, described several incidents of sexual abuse. And I'm sorry, but I just got to go through this as sensitive and general as possible. But according to the affidavit, Joseph would allegedly cover them both in a blanket, then, quote, pulled the victim's dress up and that he would, quote, touch the top portions of her thighs and would inch higher and higher, you know, essentially closer

to the waistline, and that he allegedly grazed this accuser's private area and that his hand was outside of her underwear and that he allegedly apologized. Now, according to the affidavit, the interview was then shared with Bay County, Florida law enforcement, and the deputy sheriff there had the detective and the accuser's father called Joseph, and that is when, again, this is the allegation, Joseph allegedly, quote, admitted his actions stating he touched the victim over her clothing during the call and then admitted his intentions were not pure. Matt, I go back to you. How does this development?

Now the defense is going to have access to these investigators, have access to this new evidence. How do they challenge this alleged confession? Well, yeah, that is going to be. The funny thing about it, Jesse, is you can win these small battles as you go through a case, but it doesn't eliminate sort of the big picture here. Okay, so you have a confession, a confession that is probably going to be corroborated by the evidence. I'm sure that the forensic evidence, this interview is going to show that it's similar to what he admitted to doing.

You can attack the interviewer as someone who's got some bias or a victim who doesn't fully recollect exactly what happened or has changed her version of the events. But ultimately, the defendant has admitted what he did. And he didn't admit it to the police. So you're not going to be able to come up and say, hey, I should have been Mirandized. I was in a custodial interrogation. No, he did it to a third party.

And you don't have those same protections. You know, a third party doesn't have to tell you, hey, you have the right to talk to an attorney before you talk to me about this. That's not the case. And so that makes it even more difficult with regard to the confession. I guess they have to still somehow argue that he, voluntarily didn't make this admission or or it's being mischaracterized?

I mean, yeah, obviously you can say that, you know, maybe the father is biased. You know, the little girl told him something and he, you know, talked to Dugger about it. And, you know, he's not being completely honest himself with regard to the conversation. I mean, you know, you have to, you have to present something to counter that. I want to go to the second development, the second issue of this episode, and that is that Joseph is trying to amend a no-contact order regarding his four young kids, their ages three to seven, as well as, by the way, his two youngest siblings, makes the argument that he hasn't been able to communicate with his own children since his first court appearance in March.

The big argument is that this alleged victim in this case is not one of his biological children, that he's presumed innocent, that him not being able to speak with his children, not having contact with them. It's creating a hardship for the family. This is going to be argued in court on June 20th, but does he make a good argument? Is he right, Matt? Well, you know, I think it's an appropriate argument, and that argument is made all the time. You're presumed innocent, okay? And therefore, I haven't been convicted of any crime. You know, why are these additional conditions, you know, on my, on my bond that I can't have contact with my own children? So, you know, are they successful? all the time? No, they're not because, you know, judges get a little uneasy about a situation.

They certainly don't want to say, oh, okay, yeah, lift the conditions, and then all of a sudden something else happens. It's a lot about, you know, C-Y-A in these situations for judges. They don't want to expose themselves to public ridicule if something bad should happen, you know, with his own children. Now, there's been no allegations like that, although there are criminal charges in Arkansas that deal with welfare of the children and unlawful confinement or something like that unrelated to these criminals. Kendra, his wife had a no contact order and remember she's only charged in Arkansas. That was dissolved. She was back with the kids. Does it matter that that was the case for her and it's different from him maybe? Yeah, I mean, the only thing is obviously these charges

against Joseph are, you know, more serious and they deal with the molestation of a young child and he has young children. But again, is it fair not only to him, but to the children to not be able to have contact with their father in some way. Okay, let's make it some sort of supervised contact. There's different ways to do this so that the children get an opportunity to be with the father and the father gets an opportunity to be with his family. I was hoping you could clarify something because the defense motion requests the court to modify the order to allow, quote, these family members to have peaceful contact? What does that mean? That terminology, you know, I haven't necessarily heard in the past peaceful contact.

And obviously, you know, whatever contact you're going to have with your family is going to be peaceful conduct. Yeah. I think it's just that, yeah, it's kind of, I guess, maybe a term of art that, hey, we want to have, you know, a family reunification of some sort. But I don't think that that. Does you need like a supervisor, like somebody watching over them? Yeah, and I would offer that to the court if I was the defense because, hey, it's not about lifting the no contact. I don't care about that if I'm a father. I just want to be able to have contact. So let's have it supervised.

Let's do it in a neutral place. Let's do it at the advocacy center. You know, I just want to be able to sit with my children, spend some time with them, talk to them, reassure them that everything's fine and that, you know, I still love you. I'm not, you know, avoiding you, that kind of thing. Because it could be traumatic for children. All of a sudden, father's gone and there's no explanation. What's the standard of proof, by the way, in order for a court to determine to lift a no-contact order?

Yeah, so this would be a civil matter. You know, so it would be, it certainly isn't the standard that we are all commonly think of here as beyond a reasonable doubt. you know, it's a lesser standard of ponderance of the evidence that, you know, he would not, his children would not be threatened by having contact with him. Okay, final point. So in the Arkansas case, Kendra and Joseph, they're now set to make their first court appearance August 10th. I believe there's a pretrial hearing in the Florida case for Joseph, July 14th.

What can we expect from both of these hearings? and, by the way, just overarching question, how does one case affect the other case? Well, I don't really think that one case would affect the other case as they're going through the process because in Arkansas, you have endangerment of children and unlawful confinement.

As I understand it, when they went to do a home inspection after this charge, the children's services found that they had locks on the outside of the door. instead of the inside of the report. We don't know for sure, like, what makes it up. I mean, we're kind of like taking a guess here. And so, so that's, you know, that's the issue there. That issue is not going to come up in the Florida case. The Florida case is not going to come up in the Arkansas case. They're going to run parallel to one another as they proceed. And anything crazy to expect from these hearings or are they pretty pro forma?

Well, you know, based on the Florida case and the judge signing an order that they can conduct this discovery, I would assume that we're going to see some pretrial motions evolve out of those depositions or other review of documents. So I expect to see some real movement in the Florida case, specifically from the defense, pretrial motions, challenging the evidence, challenging, witnesses, challenging the whole investigation. Arkansas, it's unclear. That appears to be more of a case of children and youth services sort of intervention, you know, some sort of dependency with regard to the children. Let's correct these problems.

Let's get some counseling. You know, let's get this family, you know, moving in the right direction. You know, more oversight than criminal accountability. All right. Matt Mangino, thank you. Give us some things to think about. Always appreciate it. Great seeing you.

Good to see you, Jesse. Thank you. That's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. You can also check us out on NBC's Peacock as well. If you want to follow me, X Instagram, my News Nation show, Jesse Weber Live, Monday through Friday, 11 p.m. Eastern. I'll see you next time, everybody.