Counting the Cost

by Jill Duggar

Even though he spoke passionately about the value of children and the importance of large families, he was single. He had never married and had no children, yet I never heard anyone at any of the conferences take issue with it. Mr. Gothard wasn’t like the rest of us. The usual rules didn’t seem to apply to him.

By preventing us from discussing anything controversial or sensitive with each other, the instruction not to “stir up contention among the brethren” became a tool for silence, for control, for guilt.

However, even though I couldn’t see it at the time, IBLP also encouraged parents to clip their children’s wings. They taught that children should stay with their parents until marriage, and that instead of going away to college, children should stay home and pick up other safer trades for work. They encouraged fathers to be self-employed, to build up family businesses and have their boys work for them. It was a clear way of keeping full-grown, adult offspring locked into the role of dependent children.

The umbrella principle had sounded harmless enough when I was a child, but it was a brutally effective means of instilling fear and controlling behavior in the lives of others, regardless of whether they were adults or children.

“They promised us secrecy,” I said when I could finally speak. “They said it was private. That it was a safe place. How could this happen?” I was in shock all afternoon. I couldn’t believe that what I had told people in confidence at the Child Safety Center all those years ago had been released. I could easily remember how much it had cost me to talk about what had happened with Josh—how painful it had been to dredge up those memories, and how frightened I was that we would be taken away from my parents as a result. How could anyone involved in that process be willing to release it to the media?

I had spent my entire life being taught that modesty was so important and that it was my responsibility as a godly woman not to behave or dress in a way that would cause any man to have impure thoughts. And now the whole world was able to read about—and imagine—what happened to me. I felt naked, ashamed, humiliated. I was being paraded through the streets, my sexual abuse being served up as nothing more than entertainment.

And I hold In Touch, Bauer, Kathy O’Kelley, Ernest Cate, the city of Springdale, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and Rick Hoyt responsible for illegally releasing and publishing the report—for inflicting on me and my sisters the trauma of a second victimization, a trauma that was made so much worse than the first by the fact that it was so public.

But I had no boundaries, no sense of what I needed to do to protect myself.

All my life I’d been taught that suffering was good. For anyone doing the Lord’s work, pain was to be accepted, even embraced.

In 2014 Mr. Gothard had stepped down after being accused of sexual harassment and molestation by thirty-four women.

JESUS

It was a cult, thriving on a culture of fear and manipulation.

“If you can share a little bit more about the things you’re struggling with, it gives them permission to do likewise.”

I felt like a visitor, an imposter, and a prodigal all rolled into one.

This is what I wanted more of that I feel like wasn’t explored as much as it could have been.

It was worth it to discover that standing up for myself or others isn’t a sin or an act of disobedience. It’s a mark of freedom, of self-respect, of dignity. In learning to treat myself more kindly, I am discovering that it’s possible to do the same for others as well.