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[interviewer] It would make perfect sense
that sitting down here today would be too much.
What was it that recently changed?
Yeah, I mean doing an interview like this isn't easy
and like I didn't wanna do it. There's a lot there that like,
do I wanna open that can of worms? It's just hard to go through.
There were a lot of families in a similar situation,
but it was very different in the sense
that like my family was on television.
[narrator] You've probably heard of the Duggar family,
Jim Bob, Michelle, and their 19 biological children.
It became like a phenomenon really fast.
[man] I want to name my child Jim Bob. Jim Bob is the man.
Everyone knew who the family was.
[girls cheer]
I actually decided to save my first kiss for marriage.
[creepy dramatic music throughout]
[Amy] I asked him, my uncle, "You don't believe in TV. Why are you on television?"
And he responded with, "Well, this is a ministry."
- 19 children. - 19 Kids and Counting.
The whole world knows them for their hit show on TLC's 19 Kids and Counting.
[Chad] Everyone keeps focusing on Duggar, Duggar, Duggar.
What they do not focus on is how the Duggars came to be.
[Jill] We were part of the Institute of Basic Life Principles
from as early as I can remember.
[dramatic music continues]
[Chad] The Duggars were the poster children for the Institute.
The leader of the Institute, he believed Christian families
should have as many children as possible in order to have more chances
to influence the world for Jesus Christ.
It's what we've trained our children, their whole lives to do good in the world.
[Josh Pease] The show explodes and there are spinoffs
and there are more families who are getting their own reality TV series while
at the same time that that's happening, there's more and more evidence coming out
of just the pandemic of abuse that is happening everywhere this culture touches.
[Jim Bob] God has used this situation with our oldest son, Josh,
really to purify our family.
Oh boy.
It's hard to actually let yourself speak the truth.
[woman] These people in this church who are supposed
to be keeping me safe are harboring pedophiles.
In this community, the word abuse doesn't really exist.
Punish him with the rod severely.
[woman] These are people who are scarring their children
and doing it in the name of God.
[Josh Pease] They turned every father into a cult leader
and franchised, spiritual, physical, emotional, psychological abuse.
[woman] It's patriarchal, it's authoritarian.
Women don't have rights, children break.
Instant obedience!
That's the society that they're building.
[Brooke] The IBLP teachings aren't Christianity
they're something entirely different.
[Kristin] The homeschooling is kind of the linchpin of this whole project.
Instead of learning math, you're learning slut shaming.
It's infiltrating into so many people's lives.
[man] The goal was to funnel Christian homeschoolers
into positions of influence in government.
- [creepy dramatic music continues] - [soldiers hut]
[woman] They're training their kids to refashion America.
They operate as a cult in plain sight. World domination was the goal.
And they believe that they're populating the army that will help us get there.
The Duggars' TV show was the engine for letting this thrive.
The shiny happy images is the sugar and we're all high on it.
[Josh Pease] There's so much more to that story. There's so much more there.
I didn't know what was going on behind the scenes.
[dramatic music crescendoing]
They were just deceiving us all.
[uplifting music]
[peaceful music]
I'm Derick Dillard, I'm from Rogers, Arkansas.
I'm Jill Dillard and I'm from Springdale, Arkansas.
I'm the fourth born of 19 children in the Duggar family.
- Hello, I'm Jill Duggar. - [laughs]
[Jill] I grew up on TV.
[Michelle] As she's blossomed into womanhood,
I've seen the good qualities of being very organized
with this friendly, outgoing personality that she has.
[Jill] There's a story that's gonna be told
and I would rather be the one telling it than the tabloids
and anybody else who can make up whatever they want.
My parents are Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar.
The oldest in our family is Josh and then twins,
Jana and John, then me, I'm Jill, and then Jessa, Jinger,
Joseph, Josiah, Joy, Jedediah, Jeremiah, they're another set of twins.
Then Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johannah, Jordyn.
Uh, wait, Justin, Jackson, Johannah, Jennifer, Jordyn, Josie.
We were on the TV show on TLC about our family.
[dramatic music]
My parents met when my dad was out on church visitation with a friend of his.
His friend had mentioned, "Oh, there's this girl, she's a cheerleader.
She just became a Christian" and my dad's like, "Let's go see her!"
[Michelle] I was the baby of seven. I had a happy childhood, I have to say,
but I wasn't like Jim Bob. I had dated, I had gotten mixed up
in that boyfriend, girlfriend mess.
[Jill] My dad invited her to his junior senior banquet. She went and then.
[Michelle] We talked for four hours about the things of God.
He opened up the word of God and explained things to me that I had never heard.
That night I got on my knees and I gave my life to God.
Somewhere in there, somewhere after that, they got married. Pretty young actually.
She was 17, he was 19.
[Jim Bob] When we first got married, we thought
maybe we'd have one or two or three children.
Michelle went on birth control pills.
She was on that up until we had her first son, Josh,
and then she went back on the pill. And then she ended up getting pregnant
while she was on the pill, and so the pill actually caused a miscarriage.
And so, at that point together we just got on our knees
before God and we asked His forgiveness
and then right after that, God blessed us with twins.
And then another one and another one.
[audience laughs]
We gave that area of our life to God and He just kept blessing us.
[uplifting music]
[Jill] My parents believed you should have as many kids as you're capable of having
until your body tells you to stop.
My grandparents, neither one on either side
agreed with my parents having a million kids.
They were like, concerned about my mom's health
and like they would always say, "Oh, is this your last one?"
[Jim Bob] Look at here, Grandpa, this is your new grandbaby.
This is Jordyn Grace Makiya Duggar, yeah.
[Jill] My dad was working like three jobs. He was working at a convenience store,
and he had a car business, and then he had a tow truck service.
When I smell that diesel smell, it reminds me of my dad with his sweet tea
in his lap, riding like one or two of us
in the truck next to him up in the cab bouncing along.
We would find all of the Kids Eat Free places
and like we'd just stay there for hours.
My dad and mom have like a little bit of pride
where it's like, "Yeah, I think we put him out of business."
My dad grew up very poor.
I think it made him feel like he probably had to like grow up a little early
and try and like protect his family.
He had one sister and her name is Deanna.
My brother and I always had a really close relationship and we got along really well.
We were brought up Missionary Baptist, which is a conservative Baptist.
We weren't allowed to go to dances.
I was not allowed to wear jeans for a while.
Being a cheerleader, I couldn't be, I wasn't allowed,
so that's why I gave my daughter, Amy, freedom
of anything she wanted to do that I was not allowed to do.
I'm Amy King, I was the crazy cousin.
So I'm Dillon King, I'm just a supportive husband. That's all.
[Amy laughs]
Everyone asks me if I'm gonna have this many kids and that's a no. [laughs]
Amy isn't the same way as us, but we still like her. [laughing]
[Amy] I am Jim Bob's niece. I'm the oldest out of all the kids.
I literally grew up on camera.
It is a constructed regality, you know you have to get the angles right.
You walk through a door 20 times. If they miss part of an interview,
you have to look a certain way so it's like, "Oh, it's the same day!"
Like, it's reality but it's not. [laughs]
The way that I was raised was rock and roll, you know, this is life and enjoy it.
Teenage years was Jonathan Taylor Thomas posters on the wall,
and NSYNC, and all the boy bands
and I got to have pool parties and there were boys.
I had my first boyfriend when I was in eighth grade.
[interviewer] Have you ever kissed a guy before?
Yes, sorry, Aunt Michelle and Uncle Jim Bob!
But I loved my cousins and I loved my family.
I was over there every day. This is how like country we are.
During recess, I would literally sneak into the cow pasture
and go across the field to see them.
But every aspect of their life was completely different than mine.
I didn't know what they were being taught, you know,
I just knew they were homeschooled.
At a young age, you realized really quickly
that it was a very strict household.
You know, you couldn't turn on the radio.
They don't have TVs either.
Yeah, or TV.
Um, you know, my mom used to call them when there'd be like a tornado warning.
[meteorologist] God, we've had numerous lightning strikes.
[Amy] Because they had no way of knowing.
You know, they had pantaloons underneath their dresses
- and those are considered… - I don't even know what that is.
[Amy] Pantaloons are white cotton pants, T-shirt.
[Dillon] Pants under a dress?
But they're not just pants, they're billowy.
You can't wear shorts, you can't show your shoulders.
You just knew that… you just didn't act like your actual self.
[Jim Bob] This is my niece Amy. I love her very much.
I was there at her birth and it's amazing. Now I'm here at your baptism.
I know!
And in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost.
[Amy] I admired my uncle.
He was a father figure in a way to me.
Back then it was just like, "Oh my goodness, what? What can't this guy do?"
I just remember thinking, is he gonna be president?
Like what? How far is this gonna go, you know?
[crowd chatter]
[Jill] My dad heard about this pro-life rally at the capitol.
[Jim Bob] When we got to the rally, there was 2000 people
standing out in front of the capitol, begging these representatives
and senators to ban partial birth abortion.
But that day, instead of going and voting to pass that ban, they voted it down.
God put in my heart that day to get involved.
[Jill] After this rally, we went and like
toured the capitol and met the governor, Mike Huckabee.
For my dad, I think that started opening his eyes to like,
"Hey, I should run for office and maybe I can make a difference."
[Jim Bob] I was totally scared to death, but we ran and the Lord put us in there.
[reporter] From Little Rock, Republican State Representative Jim Bob Duggar.
[Jill] We moved to Little Rock for a few months while they were in session,
which was obviously easier to do when you homeschool.
We loved going to the Capitol. You could take your school with you
and hang out in the balcony and watch everything happen.
Josh, my big brother, loved being there with my dad.
He got to go more than the rest of us 'cause he was the oldest.
[Jim Bob] A lot of the other state representatives named him Little Governor.
They thought he has a lot of charisma even from a young age.
[Jill] Josh had like a little boys club thing with some of his friends.
No rugrats allowed.
[Jill] They named their club "Boycott",
Boy's Christian Outreach Team, because the convenience store
at the end of our street, I think they started selling,
it was either alcohol or pornography or something like that
and they were like, we're gonna boycott them.
My dad ran twice, was elected twice,
served four years in the State House of Representatives.
[dramatic music]
[Kristin] In 2002, Jim Bob sets his sights on the US Senate.
I'm Kristin Kobes Du Mez. I'm a religious historian.
For people like Jim Bob Duggar,
Christianity required action.
So Jim Bob Duggar and his family are at the right place at the right time.
[Jill] All the kids we went in to vote with my parents all lined up.
All of us in our weird dresses and stuff.
Somebody took a picture of us and then it was printed in,
I think the New York Times.
Jim Bob loses his bid for the Senate,
but it's that picture that's going to change the direction of his life.
Parents Magazine sees that and they run a profile
on the Duggar family and that draws the attention of Discovery Health.
[Jill] Discovery Health reached out to my dad.
[narrator] This fall, explore medical science on the cutting edge.
[Jill] The network was always very much focused
on like surgeries and random stuff.
[narrator] Will George's fantasy of a full head of hair become a reality?
[Jill] Like conjoined twins!
[narrator] Above the waist, they seem to function independently.
[Jill] They wanted to do a one hour documentary about our family.
[Kristin] Jim Bob is presented with a new opportunity
which will give him the power to present his values
to the entire country and an opportunity to make a lot of money.
[narrator] Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Duggars.
I'm Jim Bob, and this is my wife Michelle. Welcome to the Duggar home.
[narrator] If you lost count, allow us to help.
That was a total of 14 kids and two sets of twins.
And the keen observer might have detected that, yes, number 15 is on the way.
That family of eight kids are the Holts. Father, Jim has known Jim Bob for years.
[Jim Holt] Jim Bob Duggar and I grew up together.
We went to Shiloh Christian High School together from seventh grade on.
[Jill] And Jim Holt was one of my dad's friends, one of his best friends.
- I'll let you go first. - Ladies first.
No, don't do that to me. Go ahead.
You want me to just talk for you, like Jim and Bobye?
- No. - Okay, just me?
Just you for you.
- Jim Holt. - And I'm Bobye.
[Jim] We kind of met on a blind date. I was 19 and…
And I was 14.
Well, we didn't know that. I didn't know that at the time.
She was, she was developed, she looked mature.
I was told by my cousin that she was 17 or 18, so I didn't know she was that young.
We all marry young in Arkansas, you know.
Did I tell you we're related? No, I'm just kidding. [laughs] We're not.
So anyway, Jim Bob said,
"We need some people there at the ice skating rink at the Jones Center."
And so we said, "Yeah, we'll come there and skate."
And then they come up and just stuck the camera
in our face right off the bat and said, "Well what do you think about this?"
And I thought, "Well, what I do?" And so, I did a little quick interview
but wished it wasn't that time.
- And you regret that? - Yeah, I regret, I regret doing that.
♪ Jesus is my everything ♪
[narrator] The two families composed the core
of what amounts to a homegrown church.
[Jim Holt] When we had our first daughter, it was March 1st.
Well, Josh was born March 3rd.
[Bobye] Over the years, our relationship with him had grown.
He was our first daughter's boyfriend and we had known him since he was a baby.
My name is Joshua Duggar. I may not be a household name,
but you might have heard of my family.
[all] We're the Duggars!
[Jill] Discovery Health did their one hour documentary and it did really well.
Then they did a Christmas special where we pretended
to have Christmas and it was like really weird.
There was five of those specials.
[narrator] The small house where the Duggars
currently live might seem crowded with half the people with only two bathrooms.
When we moved from the smaller house,
which was like 2,400 square feet into the bigger house,
which was 7,000 square feet, I was a teenager.
There were a lot more bathrooms for all of us, like nine bathrooms.
The kitchen is gorgeous.
[Josh Duggar] This is pretty much my mom's dream come true.
[Jim Holt] Jim Bob needed help getting his house done
and the show made arrangements to help him finish his house,
which was $200 or several hundred thousand dollars to get it finished.
[Jill] And then 2008, the reality show started.
17 Kids and Counting, 16 Kids and Counting,
something like that, I don't know which kid we were on by then.
One of 'em and counting!
[Deanna] The popularity grew very large.
[Amy] Everyone was mesmerized by how you can have that many kids
and have a clean house, have everything color coded.
The laundry itself is a story.
[Josh Duggar] Poor Jessa, she's in charge of the laundry
with up to 10 loads a day. Jessa needs some help.
[Jessa] Who's available to help with the laundry?
[Amy] Grocery shopping was insane!
It was just such a different way of living and in a way it looked good.
You know, there wasn't any drama.
The kids were never allowed to argue. The mom and dad were peaceful.
They never had fights. Everyone was like, who's this family?
Who's this family? Who is this family?
[Josiah] Even though we're nine times the size of an average family.
[Joy Anna] We somehow make it all work.
[Jill] We visited TLC headquarters,
they had this picture of us on their wall and it was this tandem bike
that they had taken a picture and then like photoshopped us all on one bike.
We realized this is a big deal.
Reality TV can sort of take a network
that's not exactly a juggernaut in terms of performance
and really give it new life.
Other networks like Bravo, VH1, and MTV quickly
learned these shows are relatively cheap to produce
and at the same time, lots and lots of people consume them.
My name is Danielle Lindemann. I am a professor of sociology.
I am an evangelist for reality TV.
[Jill] This is the beginning of Tater Tot Casserole.
19 Kids and Counting is kind of the perfect reality show
to teach us about why we like reality TV.
How do they make casserole for all these people?
And if that's the biggest problem in an entire episode,
there's something relaxing about that.
Reality TV at its core, it's incredibly conservative.
Your sister's going to jail, have a little compassion.
[Danielle] The Kardashians like, yes, they have sex tapes.
Like yes, they're really extreme in a lot of ways,
but at the same time they're super conventional
in terms of how they're performing their gender.
I did not wake up like this.
[Danielle] The Duggars also are performing gender
in this way where the women do the cooking, women do the cleaning.
[interviewer] Do you believe that you are
reinforcing gender stereotypes by having your girls do the cooking and cleaning?
[Michelle] I think there are some gender aspects you
just can't get around and that's not bad. I think that's a good thing.
[Danielle] Some people are watching because that can be very comforting.
It's hearkening back to some imagined pastime where things
were simpler and roles were more clearly defined.
It's these kind of modern day freak show programs
that have built TLC, Discovery into this empire that it is today.
And then the cash cows of the series were really these wedding and birth episodes,
which were bringing in monster, monster ratings.
But then as their popularity soars, as ratings soar, they keep producing kids.
So in season four, Michelle gives birth to Josie.
That was a big deal because she was medically fragile.
[interviewer] Were you and Jim Bob surprised
to find out that you were pregnant with your 19th?
[Michelle] I thought maybe it might not happen.
[Jim Bob] Michelle's blood pressure just kept going up and up and I knew it
would be life threatening for her and the baby.
The situation is fixing to change our lives…
…forever.
But you know, we praise God when all the good things
are happening and we're gonna praise God even through this difficult situation.
There she is, Michelle, here she comes, oh my.
[Danielle] And so all of this kind of feeds into this lifestyle.
The women, girls are really like the engine,
keeping it afloat, keeping it running.
The Duggars were a big get for TLC. They helped to put the network on the map.
Some might say that TLC went
from being The Learning Channel to The Lurking Channel.
We're not necessarily tuning in to learn.
- [Big Ed screams] - [Big Ed laughs]
We're kind of tuning in more for the train wreck.
From these medical documentary shows to these more contemporary freak shows.
[narrator] Julius' addiction to balloons
started when he was hospitalized at just four years old.
Discovery ultimately became a multibillion dollar company
and now they own Warner Brothers.
We're positioned to get 200 million homes,
300 million homes 'cause we have all the content that people love.
And so I think coming together, we're not just better together.
I think we're the best media company in the world.
[Jennifer] The Duggars became a beacon
for the evangelical community, the fundamentalist community.
And they finally saw themselves represented on TV.
- We had had Christian programming. - Father, we just praise you.
But never like this.
I brought my ticket and I'm getting it signed by all of them.
They have good core values and we love them.
My name is Jennifer Sutphin and I run a YouTube channel
called Fundie Fridays where I do my makeup while discussing Christian fundamentalism.
A fundie is kind of a derogative term for a fundamentalist
and it's the entire starting point for the Fundie Snark community,
which is the camp that I fall into like, the Hate Watchers.
The show has devolved more and more
into just straight propaganda as time has gone on.
But the Duggar Show is just so insanely popular
that they doubled down and they started making a bunch of other shows just like it
about Christian fundamentalist families.
♪ I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart ♪
♪ Down in my heart ♪
We prayed about it and we thought,
well maybe this is an opportunity to share with the world
that children are a blessing and a gift from God.
And so we went back to 'em and we said,
"We will do this documentary with you as long as you don't edit out our faith."
[Jim Holt] It was March of 1980, I was 15. Jim Bob was 14 at the time.
My family was pretty dysfunctional. I had a stepfather that was pretty rough.
I had a few stepfathers that were pretty rough on my mom
and then pretty rough on me.
Jim Bob said I was like the brother he always wanted
and his mother called me like a own son.
But Jim Bob had problems too.
[Jim Bob] I grew up in a situation where sometimes we had electricity shut off.
At one point we had our house foreclosed on.
My dad did not really have a spiritual focus in life.
It caused a lot of problems in our family.
The church said, "We're gonna go to this seminar.
Y'all want to go? We'll drive you."
Jim Bob and I went together.
That was our first time seeing Bill Gothard.
[narrator] The Basic Seminar, a ministry of the Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts.
As a high schooler, Bill Gothard was concerned
about the wrong decisions that many of his classmates were making.
The Basic Seminar offers lasting answers for:
resolving family conflicts, overcoming feelings of inferiority,
removing guilt and bitterness, conquering destructive habits, establishing marriage…
[drowning applause]
Do you have a sig-- a vision for what you could do
for the kingdom of the Lord that is worth you giving your life for?
If you have nothing worth dying for, you have nothing worth living for.
Here's another way of putting it. When you get to the end of your life,
what do you wanna be able to look back and say,
this is what God accomplished through my life.
Our lives were falling apart around us. Our kids were rebelling.
So this institute in Basic Youth Conflict saved my life.
I really can honestly truly say that.
That first night that Mr. Gothard spoke, I just wept.
It was some of the most revolutionary things I'd heard outta scripture.
It was about, you know, how to love God more and how to show Him you love more.
'Cause that's the greatest commandment,
is love God with everything that you have, right?
It was like one of the best things I'd ever heard in my life.
I thought it was fantastic.
[audience applauds]
Most of the people in the Institute thought Bill Gothard
hung the moon and Jim Bob was one of 'em.
We have for every one of you the answer
on how to conquer any habit you have.
[audience applauds]
[Brooke] Growing up, my family attended Bill Gothard's seminar,
the same program as the Duggars.
My name is Brooke Arnold.
I had really hesitated to talk to you guys because to me,
the whole Bill Gothard thing was this like hornets' nest
that didn't need to be kicked right now. [laughing]
[interviewer] What do you know about Institute in Basic Life Principles?
[Brooke laughs]
How long do you have? [laughs]
[narrator] Welcome to the Children's Institute
of the Seminar and Basic Life Principles.
We learn about authority and the importance
of obeying the spoken as well as the unspoken wishes
of those who are responsible for us.
[Brooke] To me, you know, Bill Gothard came
to loom over my life, almost mythologically, and I just felt like there
was something important I needed to find out.
I felt like the more that I understood about Bill Gothard,
the more I would understand myself.
Bill Gothard, Senior was a minister.
He was actually head of the Gideons Association.
The little Bible that you find in every hotel room,
that's there because of the Gideons.
So, Bill Gothard kind of comes from this evangelical dynasty
and he ended up going to Wheaton College,
which is basically the Harvard for fundamentalists.
[Kristin] In 1961, Bill Gothard
establishes these local workshops on how to parent,
how to raise your kids, how to discipline. They teach the prosperity gospel.
Obey God, and God's going to bless you.
People were getting this and then taking it
into their communities, taking it into their churches.
[Brooke] In the late '60s, people were really scared at that time,
you know, there was huge social, cultural, political, economic shifts happening.
[Kristin] You have the civil rights movement,
you have the women's rights movement, you had student protestors.
People were wondering, you know, is it Christian to have long hair?
Is it Christian to listen to rock and roll? Is it Christian to watch television?
Bill Gothard says, you don't have to be worried
about what the right thing to do is
because I know the right thing to do about everything.
The simplicity of his program was really appealing
to people who were kind of living in these moments of extreme upheaval.
[majestic music]
IBLP is the abbreviation for the Institute in Basic Life Principles.
- IBLP. - IBLP Movement, thought process.
- I-- IBLP. Okay. - I said, IBLP right.
- IBLP. - The IBLP.
- IBLP.
[Brooke] Bill Gothard has never passed up an opportunity to use an acronym.
[Bill Gothard] This matter of authority is so important.
[Brooke] Bill Gothard's teachings. There's seven non-optional Basic Principles,
but the biggest feature of Gothardism is the authority teaching.
Because we are living in a day
in which we wanna have equal authority.
Sons and daughters wanna be on equal level with parents.
Citizens, equal level with government.
I mean, the whole attitude of our day is equal authority,
but God didn't structure your life that way and it doesn't work that way.
As long as we're under these umbrellas of protection,
Satan cannot get through with destructive temptations.
[Jim Holt] There's a lot of good people in IBLP.
They go into it thinking, I don't want my child to get in trouble.
I don't want them to go down some of the path and have some of the guilt of some
of the sins that we've committed.
And so, they go into it thinking this is a better life.
I had gotten to go to The Basic Seminar in high school.
I think it was about 1980. Right after we got married, Michelle got to go
to The Basic Seminar and that was one of the best things that happened to us.
[Kristin] Jim Bob Duggar is influenced by Gothard's teachings
including that of this Quiverfull idea of having as many children as possible.
People say, well, how many children should you have?
The answer is, how many blessings of God.
[Kristin] Within the Quiverfull movement,
to be faithful Christians, one needs to open themselves
to as many children as God will give them.
Well, I mean the source of it is from the Bible.
So whoever took it, took it and ran with it.
As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of one's youth.
[kids] So are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.
[audience applauds]
[Michelle] Overpopulation is really a myth.
The whole world population could fit into the city limits of Jacksonville, Florida.
We have two children, a boy and a girl.
We have 11 children.
[Jim Holt] According to the IBLP,
the more children you have, the more blessed by God you are.
- Good morning, everybody. - [Duggars] Good morning!
Michelle, I'm almost a little afraid to ask.
I understand you've got a big announcement this morning?
We are expecting our 20th child, yes!
And just thrilled.
[Amy] Be fruitful and multiply.
That's what I heard when I was 12, when I was eight.
- That is crazy to me. - When I was…
[dramatic music]
[doctor] I don't see a heartbeat.
You don't see a heartbeat?
Oh…
[Jim Bob] Both of our hearts just sank.
There was no heartbeat and we just, we both were just devastated.
[Amy] You know, with all of the babies and with the popularity of the show,
they literally became the poster child for IBLP.
If you have not gone through The Basic Seminar,
I highly recommend it.
[Brooke] Bill Gothard was traveling around playing to huge coliseums of people.
The Institute estimates that over 2 million people
have attended Bill Gothard's seminars.
He was a rockstar.
[dramatic music]
[Josh Pease] In an age in which Christian institutions
and authority was slipping, here's a guy drawing crowds.
For people like the Duggars, it felt like winning.
So my name is Josh Pease.
And several years ago now, I wrote an article
for the New Republic about Bill Gothard, IBLP, and that whole world.
[narrator] The Advanced Training Institute
is biblically centered, parent supervised, and home based.
[Josh Pease] In 1984, Bill Gothard launches the Advanced Training Institute,
a homeschool curriculum that is basically
taking all of these things he had been teaching
in these seminars and then turning it into a curriculum for families.
The resources that at ATI has are… are what we needed.
I couldn't do it, I don't think, alone without the resources there.
[Jill] Growing up, it was kind of the idea
that like they wanted to protect us from the world.
People go into the IBLP group and all of these conferences and stuff
because it's fun and exciting and community.
This is the key. They're all about the keys to success,
the key to that, key to this.
The key that's gonna like give us what we need
to be good parents and to homeschool our kids and make sure,
make sure that our kids turn out right.
It's very appealing when you see an organization that promises that to you.
[audience applauds]
[dramatic music]
[Jennifer] The Duggars were definitely used as a recruiting tool for IBLP.
God has opened up a lot of ministry opportunities for our family.
It's not a show. It's really not, it's our life, it really is.
[Jennifer] Christian fundamentalism was largely underground.
They had their own schools, their own entertainment,
their own everything, really.
They had no reason to interact with secular culture.
And then the Duggars came around and it suddenly was mainstream.
[narrator] Tom Cruise, Scientologist,
I think it's a privilege to call yourself a Scientologist.
[Josh Pease] Scientology, sort of the gateway
for most people into that was Tom Cruise. It kind of legitimized Scientology.
And in a lot of ways, that's exactly what the Duggars were for Bill Gothard.
Duggar, Duggar, Duggar, Duggar, Duggar, Duggar, Duggar, Duggar, Duggar.
[reporter] Michelle and Jim Bob have now written their second book.
[woman] We've never had this many people in our store ever.
[Michelle] The kids have been on TV for 10 years, but we never expected our family
to receive so much attention everywhere we go.
- Are these all your kids? - 18, yes.
My name is Joshua Duggar.
[Kristin] All of the Duggar children were steeped
in Gothard's teachings and Josh Duggar was no exception.
And as he comes of age, he kind of steps into his own place in this world.
His star just continues to rise.
- We have… - Hello.
How are you?
[Meredith] And Josh and Anna are with us in the studio. Cut in.
- Cut in? - [Meredith] Mhm-hmm. Any piece.
[drum roll]
- Okay, now flip it over. - Wow.
- [Meredith] Do you know what that means? - I think that means it's a girl.
The pink is for a girl! You got a girl!
We have decided to accept that that job in DC.
[Danielle] It's not unusual or unexpected that someone who's like the golden boy
on a reality TV show would also want to go into politics.
♪ This land is your land ♪
♪ This land is my land ♪
Hello, I'm Josh Duggar.
[narrator] Two years ago, Josh accepted a high profile job
with the Family Research Council, a deeply conservative lobbying group devoted
to promoting a Christian worldview.
[Deanna] You know, I was excited for them to get their own show.
I felt like it was a good opportunity for them.
[audience applauds]
But I didn't know everything.
I didn't know what was going on behind the scenes.
Reality TV family in free fall.
[Megyn] A bombshell May 19th, 2015.
[reporter] Shocking accusations come to light
that the eldest Duggar child sexually abused children.
[reporter] After an anonymous letter to the Oprah Winfrey Show,
Oprah's team called the Child Abuse Hotline
and police started asking questions.
[reporter] Stunning, even by reality TV standards,
the news came to light when InTouch Magazine
obtained a decade old police report detailing Josh's alleged molestation.
[Megyn] It reveals that Josh, while 14 or 15 years old,
forcibly touched at least five girls in 2002 and 2003.
[reporter] Some are speculating the unnamed victims
are some of Josh's sisters.
[tense music]
[interviewer] Do you remember when he was sent away?
Yeah.
Only what you're comfortable with.
I don't know, I just, I kind of don't really wanna talk about all that, um…
Just because like…
We wish nobody had ever found out about any of that.
Yeah, it's really hard for me because I'm just like…
There were certain things that like she shared with me
in confidence because we were a married couple that,
with all of our hopes would remain confident between us
until we both died and nobody would ever find out about it.
This is something that like is heavily guarded and…
I sho-- And nobody should have ever known about it.
So I don't like talking about it, um…
The moment that the reports, everything was released,
that was the moment it was public.
[interviewer] When did you first find out about Josh?
Well, how deep do we go? 'Cause that's a rabbit hole that's… man.
- It's really twisted. - Um…
[Bobye] Um, we had known him from a baby, you know,
and he was our first daughter's boyfriend.
[Jim Holt] And Josh says something like,
"I'd like to know if I'd be able to court Kaeleigh for the purpose of marriage."
And we said yes.
[narrator] With lead son Josh, age 16,
how will the Duggars handle the delicate issue of dating?
[Josh Duggar] I think that if you're gonna give your heart away,
you need to be giving it to someone who's gonna love you
and care about you and not someone who's gonna simply
get carried away with their emotions.
[Jim Holt] So, March 30th, 2003, when we found out,
I went out to the field and just bawled.
What Jim Bob had said to us was, Josh had has gotten into some trouble.
You know, he is touched his sisters inappropriately.
That was their big thing that they would say, is it?
Yeah, he had said one time, he molested his sisters.
And Michelle said, "Don't you say that again."
He apparently been doing it since he was 12,
but we found out about it when he was 15.
So, when were you gonna tell us?
And Michelle said, "We weren't gonna have them tell you guys at all.
We were gonna have Josh confess to Kaeleigh once they were married."
And so I asked Jim Bob, I said,
"So are you basically saying you were kinda using my daughter
as like a carrot to get him to behave the right way?"
And he goes, "Well, yeah, kind of."
Jim Bob had written a bill that created a sex offender website.
I confronted him, I said, "Jim Bob,
according to your own bill that you've written
and what you've told me, your son should be on it.
He needs to make it right with the law
because he violated the law and he needs to turn himself in."
He's like, "I'm getting ready to take Josh in. Would you wanna go?"
I said, "Oh, yeah." So I went right with him.
We met at the state trooper's office.
The state trooper sat down and we told him the story.
Josh told him what we thought at the time was everything that he had done.
He goes, "I'm gonna let you go this time." He said, "But if you do it again,
I'm really gonna come down hard on you."
Well, we found out later that this guy was a friend of Jim Bob's.
[Bobye] Jim was considering, "What should I do? We gotta get him outta the house.
Where should we go? Where should we take him?"
[Jim Holt] He took him to Bill Gothard's facility down in Little Rock.
[Bobye] Which was an IBLP facility for troubled boys.
[Amy] I was like, "Where's Josh? Where is he?"
And they're like, "Oh, he is helping families build homes at a camp."
And I was like, "Oh."
And they're like, "Yeah, he's a good guy like that."
You just knew something was off.
Josh was away and they were gonna do this Parent Magazine interview.
[producer] The one that led to their show?
Yeah.
[Jim Holt] And I was asking Jim Bob, "What are you going to tell them?"
He said, "Well, we're gonna tell them that Josh is down there ministering."
And I said, "Jim Bob, you know that's not true."
So he actually just checked him out.
- Yeah, he didn't tell them. - And brought him back.
He brought him back and he said he wanted him there for his birthday.
It was right before Jim Bob's birthday.
- They didn't turn him in. - Or like make a report.
They didn't write a report, they didn't do anything.
[Jim Holt] I said, "It doesn't matter if you're the best
Christian family to ever live.
If somebody finds out about this 20 years down the road, they will eat you alive."
You know, it wasn't a blessing to Josh, I'll tell you that.
No, a curse, it was a curse to Josh.
[Amy] It breaks my heart to think about my sweet cousins
and anyone else in the IBLP.
[dramatic music]
TLC created a PR show for Gothard's teachings.
[Jennifer] This is much bigger than the Duggars.
There are a lot of other people who are
doing the same thing who haven't been caught.
[Tara] This isn't the first time I've heard about this happening
within this IBLP community.
I look at Bill Gothard himself and what he has been accused of.
So much of the focus has been specifically on the Duggars
and not on The Institute itself.
The Institute raises little predators.
[Bill Gothard] We're all proud of these mothers, fathers
who obeyed the Lord in bringing more sons and daughters into the world.
[audience applauds]
[Deanna] There's been so many people that have been hurt by this so called ministry.
[Tara] People look at Josh Duggar and they see a monster.
But, monsters are created.
[Chad] At this point, you know, I've pretty much burned every bridge
in my family just by being here, but whatever. [laughing]
[Tara] Being a homeschool kid, like you can spot 'em a mile away.
[Brooke] Bill Gothard promised that his homeschool program
would be the equivalent of a prelaw degree and a premedical degree.
[Jim Bob] We teach our children that evolution is totally unscientific.
When I first started watching the Duggars, everyone is very meek.
[Michelle] Obey mama, sit really still, look at me with big old smiles.
But they don't show how you get to the calmness.
[interviewer] Did you see your cousins being punished with rods?
[Lara] The audacity of Jim Bob Duggar to say,
"I can bring a camera crew in here for years on end
and nobody's gonna find out how we live."
[reporter] Do you ever worry that the treatment didn't work?
No, Josh was a changed person.
A lot of abuse happened.
[man] Fear was a huge component.
I would dream about being burned alive.
[Brooke] Bill Gothard taught that the creator
of Cabbage Patch dolls was a warlock.
This is what Gothard wants, this is what God wants.
[woman] Everything about that world sets you up to be the perfect victim.
[Jill] I just hope and pray that this never happens to anyone else ever again.
[dramatic music]
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