Joseph Duggar, a member of the Duggar family made famous on the TLC reality series “19 Kids and Counting,” has been charged with sexual abuse of a minor.
The 31-year-old Arkansas native was arrested on Wednesday for a crime that allegedly took place in 2020. Duggar is accused of assaulting a 9-year-old girl in Panama City Beach, Florida, while the child was on vacation with her family.
Authorities allege that Duggar asked the victim to sit on his lap and proceeded to sexually assault her.
“As the vacation continued, he also asked her to sit next to him on a couch and covered them with a blanket. During this time, Duggar manipulated the victim’s underwear and grazed her genitals. Duggar would also continue to rub his hands on her thighs,” the Bay County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “The victim stated Duggar eventually apologized for his actions and the incidents stopped after the apology.”
According to authorities, the victim’s father later confronted Duggar about the alleged abuse, prompting Duggar to admit to those actions.
Duggar was charged with lewd and lascivious behavior, molestation of a victim younger than 12 years old, and lewd and lascivious behavior conducted by a person 18 years or older, the statement noted.
Joseph is the seventh child in a family of 19 children. These accusations come almost four years after Joseph’s older brother, Josh Duggar, was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison on charges of possession of child pornography in 2022. Josh was also accused of sexually abusing five girls, including several of his sisters.
The TLC reality series was canceled in 2015 following revelations that Josh molested his sisters and a babysitter when he was a teen. Josh also admitted to cheating on his wife and issued a public apology.
TLC introduced a spinoff series, “Counting On,” which was mostly about two sisters from the Duggar family. It was also canceled following Josh’s 2021 arrest.
Joseph works as a real estate broker and has been married to Kendra since 2017, per People. The couple has three children together and possibly a fourth, though they stopped sharing their lives on social media several years ago and did not publicly announce another birth.
