A second Duggar sibling is now facing child sex abuse charges. Joseph Duggar, one of the Arkansas reality-TV sons featured on TLC's 19 Kids and Counting, was arrested Wednesday after a now-14-year-old girl told police he molested her in Florida when she was 9, authorities said. The Bay County Sheriff's Office in Florida alleges the 31-year-old engaged in repeated "unlawful sexual activity" with the child in Panama City Beach in 2020, per the New York Times. A police statement alleges Duggar repeatedly asked the girl to sit on his lap, and at a different time, covered them both with a blanket as he touched the girl inappropriately, per People.
Duggar has been charged with lewd and lascivious molestation of a child under 12 and lewd and lascivious conduct by an adult, and is awaiting extradition to Florida, according to the sheriff's office. The girl reported the alleged assaults this week to police in Tontitown, Ark., who then alerted Florida officials. The girl told investigators the abuse stopped after Duggar apologized, the sheriff's office said. Confronted by the girl's father on Tuesday, Duggar "admitted his actions" to both the father and detectives, the office said, per NBC News.
It's unclear if he has an attorney; his family has not publicly commented. The case arrives more than a decade after TLC canceled 19 Kids and Counting in 2015 following revelations that eldest brother Josh Duggar had molested five girls, including four of his sisters, as a teen. "It broke my heart," Joseph Duggar said in 2015, adding that his brother had been living "a secret life," per People. Josh Duggar is now serving more than 12 years in federal prison for a 2021 conviction of receiving child sexual abuse material.
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