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Anna, Josh, and the M-Kids, Part 10: Genes and Bedsheets


choralcrusader8613

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If we went to prisons and interviewed the prisoners, we would probably find that many of them are some sort of victims. Yes, Josh was a victim. However, he has moved past victim a long time ago in my opinion. It really is sad he didn't have grown up under different conditions and with different parents. However, he is an adult now. He could have made different choices. He could have chose to leave the cult, but he didn't. I think it is a disservice to his victims to minimize any of his actions at this point.

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My thoughts on the matter is that Josh did something horrible and should have been removed from the home. His living arrangements and the delay on reporting are squarely on his parents. I look at this as a whole problem but with many different sections. 

Josh should have been held fully responsible. Charges and therapy, real therapy.

The girls should have also received therapy.

INAL but I think that they(JB&M) should have been prosecuted for hiding the crime. 

 

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I do think it's awful that JB and Michelle made the girls keep living with their abuser.

I met a woman whose son had sexually abused his younger brother. She said that she still loved her older son but she would never let her sons live together again. I believe the plan was for the older son to move in with an aunt after he left the treatment center he was in.

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Good for her! It must have been difficult to separate her sons but the safety of the victim should always take precedence. 

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1 hour ago, Rachel333 said:

I met a woman whose son had sexually abused his younger brother. She said that she still loved her older son but she would never let her sons live together again. I believe the plan was for the older son to move in with an aunt after he left the treatment center he was in.

That was the right thing to do. Very tough for the mother though. :(

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14 hours ago, RosyDaisy said:

Fuck this poor Josh bullshit! Whatever JB and Michelle did or didn't do doesn't change the severity of Josh's actions or make him less guilty. He did this. He knew it was wrong but did it anyway...multiple times.

I agree with you (though in a slightly different way); I understand that Josh was an uneducated 14-year-old (but even when I was 14 I knew not to molest people). I understand that he had horrible parents who likely abused him. I understand that he grew up in an isolating cult with warped beliefs. Those all are EXPLANATIONS for why he did what he did. Those all help us understand that he had chances to change and be better, but that never happened.

I've posted this rant from BoJack Horseman (seriously, an amazing show) before about Josh, and I think it's still incredibly apt:

Quote

You can’t keep doing this! You can’t keep doing shitty things, and then feel bad about yourself like that makes it okay! You need to be better! … No! No, BoJack, just stop. You are all the things that are wrong with you. It’s not the alcohol, or the drugs, or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career, or when you were a kid. It’s you. All right? It’s you.

It's not Satan, it's not the secular world, it's not his shitty abusive parents...it's Josh.

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Yeah, we can't lose sight of the fact that Josh did those things. None of his younger brothers apparently acted out in the same way, despite having the same shitty parents & horrible upbringing. It is all on Josh. He made those bad choices and continued to do so even after it was revealed.

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27 minutes ago, Chocolatedefrauded said:

Yeah, we can't lose sight of the fact that Josh did those things. None of his younger brothers apparently acted out in the same way, despite having the same shitty parents & horrible upbringing. It is all on Josh. He made those bad choices and continued to do so even after it was revealed.

As far as adult Josh looked for adult consensual sex, at some point one can say he has changed. What he did at 14 was terrible and a fellony and did a deep damage to his víctims. What he did at 25 was awful and hard for Anna but it's not comparable.

Has Josh understood his wrong teen behaviour? Feels guilty? We don't really know. But as far as he's not looking for sex with minors or relatives, it's possible he has learned the lesson. Or he just likes sex with adult women, which is good news considering his past.

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3 hours ago, Chocolatedefrauded said:

Yeah, we can't lose sight of the fact that Josh did those things. None of his younger brothers apparently acted out in the same way, despite having the same shitty parents & horrible upbringing. It is all on Josh. He made those bad choices and continued to do so even after it was revealed.

I mean, you don't know what went on in that house given that the family so readily covers up abuse. 

I'm just saying that I doubt that the child Josh was born an evil molester without any other abuse happening in the family. I have suspicions about someone from their cult abusing Josh. Keep in mind that when someone  that age is acting out sexually on peers/young children it is one of the tell tale signs of sexual abuse. Given how rampant it is in this cult and how stigmatizing it would be for him to admit having experienced it, I'm not suprised that he said nothing publicly. I'm sure that his parents if they knew did nothing for him except blame him and tell him to accept Jesus.

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Let'si just say that whatever Josh has gone through does not make him innocent. But what he did does not make him any less of a victim either. All parties are guilty here, and all should pay for it. And honestly, the Ashley Madison Stuff is peanuts and you all should remember it. 

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I honestly don't think that Josh thought what he did was wrong. I have said this before he was treated like a king his whole life. 

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I feel bad for childhood Josh, who was raised in a shitty way. Where I lose all sympathy is seeing how smug he was, even in the early specials when he would have been just a year or two removed from committing a horrible crime against his own sisters. He was so damn smug and self-righteous and judgmental of others. When I think back to the engagement episodes, it still galls me to think of how smug he was and how judgmental he was of people who kiss and have sex before marriage. It never seemed to occur to the smug little asshole that when you've molested a five-year-old, maybe you have no right to judge someone who has engaged in consensual kissing or sex with another adult. I just look back at so many episodes and think, that asshole really thinks he's morally superior to the rest of us when we're doing harmless things like kissing someone, while he was committing actual crimes against people. It makes me doubt that he even recognizes he did something wrong. 

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17 minutes ago, RoseWilder said:

 I just look back at so many episodes and think, that asshole really thinks he's morally superior to the rest of us when we're doing harmless things like kissing someone, while he was committing actual crimes against people. It makes me doubt that he even recognizes he did something wrong. 

I feel like JB and Michelle covering up his wrongdoings are partly to blame for that. They very much wanted to pretend that nothing happened and other than ALERT, Josh didn't suffer any consequences for what he did. They continued to let him be the golden boy when he should have been punished. 

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On 3/27/2017 at 8:56 PM, Million Children For Jesus said:

Oh my gosh. My kids are like your mom. They never went through the terrible two's or teenage rebellion, unless you count a large bowl of ice cream when I said medium. They were/are super easy kids. Since I had my kids before my friends and before my sister, they have since told me that my kids gave them a totally wrong idea about what having kids was like. In divorce court, the mediator asked us separately what happens when the kids get in trouble. I said I count to three, and the kids said, "Mom counts to two." Lol - I've never made it to three. Good thing because I never had a plan for what would happen on three.

@Million Children For Jesus, my kids were good too. We always gave them pep talks before we went into stores (no running, no grabbing, don't  ask for xyz). If they started acting up, all I had to say was, "do you want me to take you to the van?" And they would straighten up. I don't  know what they thought was going to happen, but I never took them out there! 

And I used to count to three too, I usually didn't  make it past 2. Sometimes I would say "2", then my son would say "3!", then take off running.  

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Just because you are hurting does not mean you are allowed to hurt anyone else. 

What happened to the poor girl's happened to me, too, and all by the much-revered eldest boy. 

But you know what didn't happen? I didn't, in turn, do those things to anyone else- nor did the other five of us. 

You don't just get to use a childhood to justify a shitty action YOU undertook to make- especially with a significant age gap. 

 

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4 hours ago, Dubiousclaire said:

@Million Children For Jesus, my kids were good too. We always gave them pep talks before we went into stores (no running, no grabbing, don't  ask for xyz). If they started acting up, all I had to say was, "do you want me to take you to the van?" And they would straighten up. I don't  know what they thought was going to happen, but I never took them out there! 

And I used to count to three too, I usually didn't  make it past 2. Sometimes I would say "2", then my son would say "3!", then take off running.  

Some kids are just easier than others. My oldest is super easy. Look at her funny and she stops what she is doing (although this can have the negative effect of she assumes everything is her fault). I toooootally thought it was the result of my far superior parenting techniques. My middle child was a little tougher, but she was in daycare and I blamed her not getting my full attention. 

I've been home with my youngest since day one. She is *hell on wheels*. Our house is like entering a high security prison- anything potentially dangerous is under lock and key and we are constantly scoping for new methods of escape. We no longer have dining room chairs- at first she would only climb onto the table if we didn't push them in, then she figured out how to pull them out so we put them on top of the table, then she figured out how to pull them *off* the table (and about dropped a 30lb chair on herself in the process) so now we just stand. She has recently figured out how to climb the warmer drawer of the oven and grab onto the door handle and I honestly don't know how I'm going to manage that one- I've basically just been super firm yelling "no" and pulling her away asap...we may just have to eat cold food unless my husband is home ;) She also likes to climb the little 1.5in wide pieces of stairs that are on the outside of the steps- you know the pieces I'm talking about? She's all of 15m old. I swear I keep an eye on her, but she is fast and quiet! I'm debating a bell necklace or something to at least keep track of her. My husband has joked about a squirt gun. I'm pretty sure the universe is laughing at me for anytime I said "oh, we just tell her no" when asked about misbehavior 

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8 hours ago, Melissa1977 said:

But as far as he's not looking for sex with minors or relatives, it's possible he has learned the lesson. Or he just likes sex with adult women, which is good news considering his past.

Agreed. It is good news that he likes women and not kids, but I don't know if he learned any lessons. His actions as a teen are part because he was acting out his dysfunctional environment, and part because he's naturally a risk taker and opportunist. I don't think he is attracted to children, based on evidence that supports he is attracted to women. He molested his sisters because that's who was there. He didn't stop because he learned a lesson. He stopped because he lost the opportunity (got caught) and new opportunities (sex with Anna) presented itself. 

He was an opportunist when he was a teenager molesting his sisters, an opportunist when he got married young, and an opportunist as an adult with his Ashley Madison accounts. True, he has moved on to consensual sex, so he may have learned about consent, but he still uses ATI to homeschool his kids, which tells me he still doesn't get it.

Either way, given an opportunity to cheat again, I think he would take it. It's in his nature, and as far as I know, he isn't getting therapy to understand why he acted out as a kid, or to help him find ways to take positive risks. Fingers crossed, it's all consensual here on out.

10 minutes ago, send*the*ferrets said:

I toooootally thought it was the result of my far superior parenting techniques. 

Haha! I didn't know my kids were easy until I volunteered at their schools. That was an eye opener! I definitely had a, "holy shit, I got lucky," moment. When people ask what I did/do to have such easy kids I tell them, "genetic roulette, you get what you get, and you don't get upset." I wish I could pretend it was my parenting, but nahhhh, I know it was just DNA and luck.

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I think his self righteousness and being smug might have been a way to make up for what he did to his sisters. Guess he wanted to prove to his parents that he was a "good boy" after all.

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11 minutes ago, Tangy Bee said:

I think his self righteousness and being smug might have been a way to make up for what he did to his sisters. Guess he wanted to prove to his parents that he was a "good boy" after all.

Reflecting on it now, I can definitely see that his snugness might have been him over compensating, putting on a good game face for the cameras, to please his parents, or give TLC the image they wanted.

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1 hour ago, KelseyAnn said:

Just because you are hurting does not mean you are allowed to hurt anyone else. 

What happened to the poor girl's happened to me, too, and all by the much-revered eldest boy. 

But you know what didn't happen? I didn't, in turn, do those things to anyone else- nor did the other five of us. 

You don't just get to use a childhood to justify a shitty action YOU undertook to make- especially with a significant age gap. 

 

I was going to jump into the overall conversation, but anything I would have said has been covered already.

I just want to say thank you for sharing and that I'm really sorry that happened to you. I hope you're doing ok now or at least you're in a safer environment now. 

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I should add to my previous comment that I'm not trying to excuse Josh's behavior. He clearly has not accepted responsibility as an adult. But I think to demonize childhood Josh as a a selfish evil predator is to over simplify the situation. I think it's also naive to assume that there is no one else in the family with similar problems when the family covers things up so readily.

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I recently watched some old episodes where he and Anna had just gotten engaged and then married. Sure, the sex thing was a bit cringey, but he seemed genuinely in love with her. I think in a non-Fundie world she would have been his first love, but then he would have moved on to someone else in a few years. It's really sad that she feels she has to stay with him. ;(

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On 4/3/2017 at 2:19 PM, lomo6 said:

What's amazing is that the majority of the Duggar kidults are quite thin despite this kind of diet into their early-to-mid-20s. Anna's had 4 kids in what, 6 or 7  years? - and she's still smaller than a lot of moms I know, especially in the South (that's not meant as snark - Southern states generally have the highest obesity rates in the US). And even Joshley is pretty average for an American guy, and probably thinner than a lot of his fellow Arkansans (where more than 1/3 of adults are obese, not just overweight). 

I find this odd too. Many Fundies are from regions with very high obesity rates, and yet the rate seems so much lower among Fundies. However, I don't notice a real focus on health the way I do with a lot of Mormons. At least not the Fundies we follow.

Is it a lack of enough food to go around (although, especially if the food being eaten is carb-y junk, that wouldn't necessarily translate to weight less), an avoidance of fast food places for fears of being defrauded, or a hyper awareness of one's image, especially among women?

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5 hours ago, send*the*ferrets said:

Some kids are just easier than others. My oldest is super easy. Look at her funny and she stops what she is doing (although this can have the negative effect of she assumes everything is her fault). I toooootally thought it was the result of my far superior parenting techniques. My middle child was a little tougher, but she was in daycare and I blamed her not getting my full attention. 

I've been home with my youngest since day one. She is *hell on wheels*. Our house is like entering a high security prison- anything potentially dangerous is under lock and key and we are constantly scoping for new methods of escape. We no longer have dining room chairs- at first she would only climb onto the table if we didn't push them in, then she figured out how to pull them out so we put them on top of the table, then she figured out how to pull them *off* the table (and about dropped a 30lb chair on herself in the process) so now we just stand. She has recently figured out how to climb the warmer drawer of the oven and grab onto the door handle and I honestly don't know how I'm going to manage that one- I've basically just been super firm yelling "no" and pulling her away asap...we may just have to eat cold food unless my husband is home ;) She also likes to climb the little 1.5in wide pieces of stairs that are on the outside of the steps- you know the pieces I'm talking about? She's all of 15m old. I swear I keep an eye on her, but she is fast and quiet! I'm debating a bell necklace or something to at least keep track of her. My husband has joked about a squirt gun. I'm pretty sure the universe is laughing at me for anytime I said "oh, we just tell her no" when asked about misbehavior 

My friend had a part monkey child. ..she was absolutely fearless. She got her first stitches at 2, from climbing up the back of a recliner, standing on it, then falling and hitting her chin on a table. My friend had that weird, out of body-watching a movie in slo-mo feeling as she saw her.  The first child was a brilliant angel of course! They trick you into having more! 

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11 hours ago, Carm_88 said:

I feel like JB and Michelle covering up his wrongdoings are partly to blame for that. They very much wanted to pretend that nothing happened and other than ALERT, Josh didn't suffer any consequences for what he did. They continued to let him be the golden boy when he should have been punished. 

Josh didn't attend ALERT. Only Josiah, Joe, and Jeremiah have been there. This is the Duggars' own admission, as they've been shilling ALERT on their FB page on and off for the past couple of months. 

Instead, he was shipped off to a Gothardite buddy who was refurbing an old hotel into a new Gothard Training Center (near Little Rock, IIRC). At any rate, his penance was three months of construction and probably a lot of Gothardism thrown in during downtimes. I'd venture a guess that it was LESS "training"/counseling than he would have received with the structure of a place like ALERT. THAT place is pure indoctrination. Jesus Jail was probably easier. 

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