Four of the Duggar sisters, who appeared on the former TLC show “19 Kids and Counting” have filed a lawsuit after the police reports that implied their brother Josh Duggar had sexually abused them were disseminated to the media. Jill Dillard, Jessa Seewald, Joy Duggar, and Jinger Duggar (the two older sisters are married and have changed their names) have filed a federal breach-of-privacy lawsuit against the city of Springdale and Washington County, Arkansas, as well as some officials involved in the investigation, and In Touch.

Stories about Josh’s abuse surfaced in 2015, but the abuse claims stem from 2006. The police reports were released as the result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made in 2015 by In Touch. In Touch approached the city officials for the documents after an anonymous tipster came to its writers with claims about Josh Duggar. The sisters argue that when they talked to the investigators in 2006 they were told that the information would be kept confidential, and under Arkansas’ FOIA rules, interviews with minors cannot be disclosed.

Essentially the sisters argue that the FOIA request shouldn’t have been complied with on the officials’ part, or at the very least the documents should have been heavily redacted. The documents provided to In Touch were somewhat redacted–in that the names of the girls and Josh were blacked out, but they still contained the names of their parents. According to the lawsuit it was easy to determine who the victims were based on that information. The sisters are seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. They have also released a statement, claiming that the filed the lawsuit to protect abuse victims in the future from breaches to their privacy

“19 Kids and Counting” was cancelled after the allegations about Josh Duggar, and his parents’ horrific choice to cover up the abuse. Duggar allegedly sexually abused five girls when he was a teenager–four were his sisters–by fondling them while they slept. After those revelations, sponsors began pulling out of the show, and it was cancelled by TLC. Additionally Josh Duggar, who was working at the time at the incredibly conservative Family Research Council, resigned from his job.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Josh Duggar, of TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting” fame is in trouble again. This time, he’s being sued by porn star Danica Dillon for emotional and physical damage she sustained while the two had consensual sex.

Dillon, whose non-stage name is Ashley Stamm-Northup, filed the suit on Tuesday. She’s asking for $500,000 total in damages. She alleges that the two had sex twice earlier this spring, after they met in a strip club in Philadelphia. By her account, he paid her $600 for lap dances and then they went back to his hotel room, where he gave her another $1500 for sex.

However, while that sex started as consensual, Dillon claims that it turned too rough, he manhandled her, and that “it felt as if she were being raped.” She claims that it exceeded her consent at that point. Then, when Duggar allegedly tried to “apologize” to Dillon for the encounter a month later, the same thing happened–they engaged in consensual sex that turned too rough.

Dillon claims that Duggar “assaulted her to the point of causing her physical and emotional injuries” and that she is now seeing a doctor for the severe anxiety caused by the encounters. The lawsuit claims that she is suffering from mental anguish similar to post-traumatic stress disorder. Finally, she claims that as a result of the injuries she sustained from Duggar, she has been unable to “work in her chosen field”–presumably pornography.

Duggar has been a popular topic for the press so far this year, particularly after revelations surfaced that he molested young women as a teenager, including a few of his younger sisters. He resigned his position at the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian advocacy group that lobbies against gay rights, abortion, pornography, and other social issues. Then, his name was posted during the Ashley Madison data breach this summer, and contained credit card information linking him to the infamous cheating site. He checked himself into rehab shortly after that data was released.

In a statement based on those events, Duggar said:

As I am learning the hard way, we have the freedom to choose to our actions, but we do not get to choose our consequences. I deeply regret all hurt I have caused so many by being such a bad example. I humbly ask for your forgiveness.

In light of this lawsuit, Duggar may have to testify about his history, including the past crimes of molestation that his family covered up. Duggar can’t seem to stay out of the news for long, and this lawsuit may open the door to even more horrific revelations.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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In 2006, the criminal justice system helped Josh Duggar’s family expunge his record of abuse and protected him from being exposed in media reports as someone who had “forcibly fondled” younger girls (a.k.a. molested children).

Every day–then, now–the criminal justice system targets people of color–especially women and trans people of color–for abuse and shootings (a.k.a. public executions for walking while Black or Latina).

And yet.

And yet we continue to use pictures of him in suits instead of finding pictures that try to reflect him negatively (see featured photo), like the mainstream media insists on doing with young people of color slaughtered by cops.

When Black young men are murdered by cops, they are cast as “thugs.” When a young white man is accused of child abuse, he retains his status as ‘poor cult victim.’

This serves both racist and misogynist ends: white perpetrators remain victims, and his misogyny is cast as an exception (caused by his cultish family).

The mainstream media likes to speculate on the “scandalous” aspects of how the family helped cover up the abuse; how the family, in fact, abused him through their extremism and his isolation from “mainstream culture”; but we don’t like to speculate on how Josh Duggar is not, in fact, an exception. Josh Duggar is the rule.

Duggar is an embodiment of rich white cis male non-dis/abled privilege, and while the control his family exerts over him is indeed frightening, their misogyny is not an exception.

The Duggars may be particularly explicit in the ways they preach and practice misogyny, but what pieces focusing on the cultish aspects of the Duggars that facilitated the abuse miss is that every person in this country–every. single. person.–is raised to hate women. The Duggars may be more explicit than most, but they are not alone: Josh Duggar’s apparent belief that women and girls exist for male pleasure is the same belief that we are all raised with.

It’s called rape culture, and it’s everywhere.

The fact that the Duggars isolated their children so much that they didn’t have a TV misses the point: all of us with TV, too, receive the same message–in a heteropatriarchal society like this one, women are disposable.

Because rape culture is not isolated to “cults.” It is everywhere.

Because women–especially women of color–are disproportionately targeted by the same criminal justice system that protected Duggar when the first police report was issued against him.

Because living in a heteropatriarchal society makes us much more vulnerable to debilitating mental health issues.

Because “strong women” in the mainstream media is still the only trope we’re allowed to hope for.

Because the kind of misogyny that the media ascribes to the cult of the Duggars is the same kind of misogyny that we are exposed to every single time we turn on the television, interact with men in the street, or are educated in a public school system that still focuses on “great” [read: genocidal] white men and does not teach consent as the golden rule in health classes (a.k.a. teach rape culture to all students).

Because we can condemn–or pity–Josh Duggar as much as we’d like.

But ultimately, we must recognize that his privileged positions and entitled, abusive actions are the rule, not the exception.

Jennifer Polish

Jennifer Polish is an English PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, where she studies non/human animals and the racialization of dis/ability in young adult literature. When she’s not yelling at the computer because Netflix is loading too slowly, she is editing her novel, doing activist-y things, running, or giving the computer a break and yelling at books instead. Contact Jennifer at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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