A reader asked the other day why I had yet to comment on Josh Duggar's heavily publicized 2002-2003 sexual misbehavior that cost him his job, reputation and his family their long-running TV show on TLC.
Readers doubtlessly already know the 27-year-old Duggar, who directed the Christian-conservative Family Research Council, admitted to acting sexually inappropriate with young girls when he was a teenager.
His indiscretions reached the point 12 years ago where his father, former legislator Jim Bob Duggar, says he sent his son for three months of rehabilitative training at the old Veterans Hospital building in Little Rock and afterwards reached out to the state police. But no one can locate records of such a program, much less of Duggar ever attending it. His mother told reporters Josh spent those months working with a family acquaintance remodeling a building rather than rehabilitating. Oops.
Josh Duggar's admitted transgressions, forced to light by a news account, made national headlines with devastating results to his career, personal life and that of his enormous family that has lost its popular 19 Kids and Counting as a direct result of the publicity.
Duggar admits to molesting at least five girls over about two years as a midteen, which included fondling them during sleep. His father, Jim Bob, reached out to elders in his church in March 2003. In July 2003, Josh, Jim and an elder paid a visit to former Arkansas State Police Cpl. Joseph Hutchens.
That visit supposedly resulted in Hutchens administering Josh a "stern talk." Any notation of Josh's transgressions that day (which the law calls crimes and requires law enforcement to report them to the state's Child Abuse Hotline) and whatever admissions might have been made as a result of that meeting are nowhere to be found today.
A news account said when a source contacted the abuse hotline in December 2006, Springdale and state police investigators called to schedule interviews with witnesses and victims. However, this documented call came after the three-year statute of limitations for sexual assault, according to a quote from Springdale Det. Darrell Hignite.
Shortly before Duggar resigned, Washington County Juvenile Court Judge Stacey Zimmerman ordered the police report destroyed, since one victim remains a minor and the records might reveal her identity.
This newspaper already had its hands on a copy of the report before Zimmerman's order. The Springdale Police Department complied with Zimmerman's order and destroyed all its records on the case, its spokesman told the reporters.
Meanwhile, former governor and current GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and his wife, Janet, immediately leapt to the Duggars' defense, saying the exhaustive news coverage was "bloodthirsty" and sensational. The Huck and Mrs. Huck certainly are entitled to their opinion and admirable public support for friends. Frankly, I wish he'd stayed out of this ugly matter, especially since the Duggars concede the facts.
The simple fact is that the Duggar family, as evangelicals who for millions of viewers represent the public face of family values, makes them obvious targets for detailed examination, especially when this kind of icky thing surfaces.
And why wouldn't they have expected the searing glare of intense scrutiny and inevitable consequences? Surely they recall the headlines created by the hard falls of America's megachurch Christian leaders. The Duggars have been living with this hanging over their heads for 12 years now.
All the supposed rehabilitative "training," stern police lecturing, removed court records and failure to document meetings is the biggest problem for me. It reeks to everyone of good ol' boy favoritism. Yet it gets even worse in my book.
We learned from the last paragraph of the original news story about Duggar's misbehavior that Cpl. Hutchens, the now-former trooper who gave the supposedly stern lecture, would himself later be convicted of multiple offenses of child pornography and is serving a 56-year sentence.
You might suspect I was making that up if it wasn't true.
This matter is yet another example of what over the years I've come to call Mike's big ol' woolly splash effect. Imagine the ripples from a rock tossed into a placid pool stretching from bank to bank. In this instance, the improper actions of a teenager have sent capsizing waves crashing over the lives of his family, his employer, his church, the state's criminal justice system, a presidential candidate and certainly across the remainder of his existence.
Just look at how many people already have been dragged into trying to explain various roles in the life and times of young Joshua Duggar back in 2003.
I contend that's one heck of an excruciating lesson for a bunch of even the best good Christian folk to learn.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at mikemasterson10@hotmail.com.
Editorial on 05/31/2015