Josh Duggar will remain in jail after an appeal to overturn his child pornography conviction and receive a new trial was denied by a federal court judge.
The 35-year-old former reality TV star was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2021 after child sex abuse material was found on his work computer.
Investigators accused Duggar of having over 200 images of child porn on his devices “ranging from about 18 months to 12 years of age.” Josh pled not guilty, but the court found the evidence overwhelming.
According to KTLA 5 News, the defense maintained Duggar’s innocence and an appeal was filed shortly after he was sentenced.
Duggar’s attorneys argued that a judge should not have allowed Duggar’s statements he made to investigators during the search of his car dealership that found the images.
Your tax-deductible gift helps our journalists report the truth and hold Christian leaders and organizations accountable. Give a gift of $30 or more to The Roys Report this month, and you will receive a copy of “Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation” by Christa Brown. To donate, click here.
A document filed in court on Monday stated: “After consideration, it is hereby ordered and adjudged that the judgment of the district court in this cause is affirmed in accordance with the opinion of this court.”
Josh was the oldest of 19 siblings with parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. They were on two hit TV shows over the past decade, TLC-produced 19 Kids & Counting and Counting On, in which the family professed Christian beliefs and morals in their household.
The original show was cancelled in 2015 after Josh admitted to molesting his sisters when they were younger. The Duggar family was profiled in the recent limited series Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, which debuted as the most popular docuseries ever for Prime Video.
Josh Shepherd contributed to this article, which was originally published at CHVN.
Journalist Colleen Houde is a news writer and on-air host at CHVN in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
English 
Spanish 
4 Responses
And twelve years is pretty much a slap on the wrist for a predator of this magnitude. Not only is it right that he remains in prison now, but his sentence needs to be far longer than it was.
I agree wholeheartedly about the relative ease of a12-year prison sentence. At that time, he will still be of age where he can continue his predatory ways and heaven forbid, may have learned additional methods. My understanding is this type cannot be rehabilitated.
This culture will encourage his wife to remain married to him and I’m sure to have more children with him once he’s released from prison. For the safety of her and their children, the longer he stays in prison, the better. Someone with this kind of track record has no business being around any children, including his own.
I’m still aggrieved that a subculture like this still exists, and perhaps thrives, in the United States today. The Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts was quite the rage when I was a college student. Many of my classmates at our Southern Baptist college were beside themselves when they heard Bill Gothard speak in person. As a non-Baptist, it didn’t seem quite right that one man had successfully developed a “guaranteed” formula for godly living that was more reliable than the Bible, so I passed on the opportunity. In retrospect, that was a smart decision.