In light of the discovery that Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar failed to properly report that their eldest son, Josh, assaulted several girls in his teen years, a lot of things the Duggars have done and said in the past on TLC and elsewhere look really creepy. We found one incident last week, when Josh was seen joking about incest on TLC. Well, here’s another example. Three years ago, Michelle Duggar took to her blog on TLC to explain her family’s stance on modest dress.
For those who don’t know, the Duggars adhere to ultra-strict standards of appearance and grooming. Women wear long skirts and don’t cut their hair or wear makeup, while men are clean-shaven and short-haired. However, even during the summer, when temperatures in northwest Arkansas can regularly top 90 degrees, the Duggars don’t wear shorts. Michelle explains it this way:
“This isn’t for everyone, and we don’t push this on anybody. And we don’t judge anyone that doesn’t have this perspective, but for us, we felt like we needed to be covered from our neck to below our knees mainly because God talks about the thigh being uncovered, and how that’s nakedness and shame.
And so in our dress — whether we’re doing activities that require us to climb, ride a horse, bike, swim, whatever — we just want to keep the thighs and torso covered; we don’t want to play peekaboo so that there’s a visual element that might defraud someone.”
Notice the word Michelle used–“defraud.” We first saw this term last week, when I mentioned that the guy who influenced much of the curriculum the Duggar kids use while being homeschooled, Bill Gothard, believes that you defraud someone when you dress or act in a manner that can stir up lustful thoughts in another person. Incredibly, whenever students at Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute counsel someone who has been sexually assaulted, they’re told to see if there is a way the victim was in any way responsible for his or her ordeal. Among the ways they can be responsible is if they “defraud” their attacker by tempting them, or if they sin and put themselves out of their father’s protection.
When I first saw this last fall on TLC’s Web site, I thought Michelle was saying that she and Jim Bob were trying to counter the trend toward over-sexualizing our kids too early. At the time, I saw this as nothing more than a rather archaic reaction to a very real problem, but nothing to be really worried about. But in light of the fact that we now know the Duggars condone victim blaming, this post suddenly takes on a new meaning. Does Michelle think that if her girls dress a certain way and they’re ever assaulted, it could be their fault? In light of what we now know about what the Duggars were taught about how to counsel victims of sexual assault, it’s a very valid question.
I ask the same question I asked last week–what parent with any kind of love for their kids would suggest in any way that it’s their fault if they’re sexually assaulted? This seems to be yet more proof that Jim Bob and Michelle have spent the last decade defrauding us by making us think they’re just a good Christian family. It also seems to lend credence to concerns that TLC didn’t adequately vet the Duggars before creating a full-fledged series for them.
Jim Bob and Michelle are due to break their weeklong silence tomorrow night in an interview with Megyn Kelly, who admits she probably won’t go as hard on the Duggars as some of us have hoped. If Kelly had read this blog by Michelle and delved more into the evidence that she at the very least condones even suggesting that being assaulted is the victim’s fault, it’s a safe bet that their treatment tomorrow wouldn’t be nearly as kind.
