Opinion | The Duggar Family and Reality TV’s Exploitation of Kids
There are such a lot of disturbing moments within the documentary sequence “Shiny Completely happy Individuals: Duggar Household Secrets and techniques” — concerning the prolific household behind the saccharine actuality TV hits “19 Children and Counting” and “Counting On” — that it’s troublesome to pinpoint probably the most appalling. Over 4 episodes, the Amazon Authentic sequence, out this Friday, is a perpetual unfurling of abuse.
We learn the way the patriarch of the Duggar household, Jim Bob, determined to place his brood on tv to glorify and amplify his retrogressive beliefs, even after he knew that his oldest son, Josh, had been accused by a number of of his siblings of molesting them. When requested in 2015 why he put his household on TV, Jim Bob stated: “We had nothing to cover.”
We be taught concerning the sexual abuse allegations towards Invoice Gothard, who led the Institute in Fundamental Life Rules (I.B.L.P.), which The Washington Publish described, in 2016, as a hitherto “influential home-schooling ministry.” And that, based on the documentary, “The Duggars had been the poster kids for the institute.” (The plaintiffs in a civil go well with towards Gothard dropped their case in 2018, and Gothard has denied the allegations towards him.)
We hear from former I.B.L.P. adherents who describe sexual and bodily abuse inside their very own households, and the way the ideas of the ministry — which emphasised paternal authority — had been used accountable a few of them for their very own mistreatment.
We be taught that in 2022, Josh was sentenced to greater than 12 years in jail for downloading baby sexual abuse imagery.
However probably the most unsettling factor that the documentary illustrates is how the Duggars’ sequence — and extra broadly, actuality TV — amplified a household’s exploitation of its kids, and the way little company the youngsters appeared to have, even after turning into adults. Whereas it’s authorized to place children in actuality reveals, in lots of circumstances, it’s exhausting to see the way it’s moral.
In response to Jill Duggar Dillard, the fourth baby of Jim Bob and his spouse, Michelle, and the one one of many 19 kids to take part in “Shiny Completely happy Individuals,” her victimization was manifold. Within the documentary, Jill says the Duggar kids had been by no means adequately compensated for the lack of their privateness. She and her husband, Derick Dillard, clarify that Jill’s father had her signal contracts with out studying them first and that her mom continued to signal for her as if she had been a minor even when she was an grownup.
Jill had been taught her complete life that her father’s authority was sacrosanct and by no means to be questioned. I spoke with Julia Willoughby Nason, one of many administrators of “Shiny Completely happy Individuals,” and she or he instructed me that not one of the ex-I.B.L.P.ers interviewed for the documentary had been stunned that the cash was filtered by Jim Bob. “That’s how this complete system is about up, for the lads to have simply whole, final authority over their household,” she stated.
“Sure,” Jill says within the movie, “we had been taken benefit of.”
Jim Bob in the end provided Jill and Derick a lump sum, they are saying, however there have been strings hooked up. “You needed to signal one other take care of my dad — his manufacturing firm,” Jill says, for a time period that “could be like ceaselessly. We had been robotically like, ‘We’re finished.’” Finally, the couple say, they needed to get an lawyer concerned to obtain compensation after they left “Counting On” in 2017.
I don’t suppose any amount of cash could be sufficient compensation for Jill, contemplating the timeline of occasions.
Jill and her siblings had been reportedly molested by their brother Josh in 2002 and 2003, and Josh was subsequently despatched by his father to what’s been described as a Christian counseling program. (In response to a 2006 police report, Michelle Duggar stated Josh didn’t work with a licensed counselor.) In 2015, writing for Defamer, Allie Jones summarized: “When Josh returned house in July 2003, his father and church elders took him to a state trooper to admit what he’d finished. The trooper, Cpl. Hutchens, gave Josh a ‘very stern speak’ however didn’t cost him with any crimes. In Contact stories that Hutchens was later arrested on baby pornography fees and is presently serving 56 years in jail.”
By 2015, when In Contact printed the police report, the Duggars had been family names and Jill was one of many stars of the franchise. The 2014 “19 Children and Counting” episode that includes her and Derick’s marriage ceremony drew 4.4 million viewers — a sequence file on the time, based on Deadline.
After the allegations towards Josh got here to gentle, “19 Children and Counting” began dropping advertisers, and in “Shiny Completely happy Individuals,” Jill implies that she was coerced into defending her brother — or a minimum of mitigating the accusations towards him — in a 2015 Fox Information interview with Megyn Kelly, as a way to save the household enterprise. In that interview, Jill instructed Kelly: “It’s very delicate in comparison with what occurs to some younger girls.”
That was then.
“The Megyn Kelly factor … I don’t even like to speak about it. As a result of it’s not one thing that I’m pleased with,” Jill says in “Shiny Completely happy Individuals.” “If I hadn’t felt obligated to love, one, do it for, like, the sake of the present and, two, do it for, like, the sake of my dad and mom, I wouldn’t have finished it.”
As a substitute of totally chopping ties with Jim Bob and his household, in 2015, the TLC community canceled “19 Children and Counting” and spun off “Counting On” to concentrate on the older Duggar kids, who had been beginning households of their very own. “I have a look at that type of a factor as simply additional exploitation of the ladies,” stated Tia Levings, a former I.B.L.P. follower interviewed for “Shiny Completely happy Individuals.” “They now are liable for being the breadwinners, protecting the present going. They’re doing this on the again of their very own abuse tales. And in some unspecified time in the future you’re like, when is that this crap going to cease?”
It stopped solely after Josh was arrested on baby pornography fees in 2021 and “Counting On” was canceled.
Whereas the Duggars might appear to be a very outrageous, egregious instance, they’re not the one actuality stars who’ve been concerned in sexual abuse circumstances. As Meredith Blake wrote in 2021 for The Los Angeles Instances, different adults who appeared with their households on numerous TLC reveals have pleaded responsible to baby sexual abuse. (The administrators of “Shiny Completely happy Individuals” instructed me that they reached out to producers who labored on the Duggar household reveals, they usually declined to take part within the documentary.)
Kids who seem on actuality TV could also be doing so with out applicable compensation and with out sufficient authorized safety: Kids who’re “employed as actors or performers in movement photos, theatrical, radio, or tv productions” are exempt underneath the Honest Labor Requirements Act. There’s a patchwork of state legal guidelines that cowl some baby performers, although 17 states don’t particularly regulate the employment of youngsters in leisure in any respect, and relying on interpretation, actuality TV might handle to bypass even the scant protections that exist in some states.
Reporting for The Los Angeles Instances in 2010, Matea Gold and Richard Verrier wrote that the Duggar household “didn’t take into account the filming to be work,” viewing “19 Children and Counting” as, successfully, a documentary — an extremely self-serving view, even underneath the absolute best circumstances. Within the report, Jim Bob is quoted as saying that “The attraction of the present is its observational method to our every day routine, which is identical with or with out the cameras.”
Within the fourth and ultimate episode of “Shiny Completely happy Individuals,” Jill says, “I imagine strongly that victims ought to all the time be protected. Victims ought to all the time be cared for. You’re on the market. Your story’s on the market.” She provides, “I’d relatively have some say in what that appeared like.”
Whereas I’m glad she now has a platform to inform her aspect of the story, I want she had by no means been compelled to be a public individual within the first place. Her dad and mom didn’t defend her. And the truth TV industrial complicated, which appeared completely completely satisfied to revenue from televising a few of her most private moments, together with labor and beginning, didn’t defend her, both.
I hope producers, and the tabloids that proceed to advertise the celebrities of those reveals, are beginning to see the long-term results of the highlight on kids and younger adults. And I hope viewers are being attentive to what could also be lurking beneath the floor when households current themselves on nationwide tv as exemplars of a lifestyle or set of values — and, when it’s known as for, turning away. These reveals solely get made as a result of somebody is watching them.
