When Amy Duggar King found out that her cousin Josh Duggar had been committing sexual crimes, she could only think of one thing: the moment Josh sat in her living room and held her then-newborn son, Daxton.
“I have never felt more betrayed than in that moment, when this beautiful, precious newborn is in the hands of a monster,” she tells TODAY.com. “I just vowed to myself that will never happen again. I will protect him at all costs.”
King was a fixture on TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting,” which followed the adventures of a large Arkansas family. As an only child living near her strict uncle and aunt, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, King was portrayed as being “Crazy Cousin Amy,” a nickname that she did not appreciate.
“19 Kids and Counting” was cancelled in 2015 over revelations that King’s oldest cousin, Josh, had molested four of his sisters and a babysitter. The following month, Josh confessed to a pornography addiction and cheating on his wife. In April 2021, Josh Duggar was arrested and eventually convicted for downloading photos and videos portraying the sexual abuse of children, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
King is finally sharing her side of the story in her new book, “Holy Disruptor.”
“I think it could have been completely preventable,” King says of her cousin’s downfall. “If you knew him back in the day, he was the most loving, caring person and and I don’t think it was a façade.”
King’s book certainly shares a number of shocking secrets — physical and emotional abuse, financial coercion and more — that will floor fans of the show.
“Some people are going to see it as ‘the tea,’ and then others are going to see it as a tell-all,” she explains. “For me, I consider it connecting the dots as to why I left, as to why things have changed.”
She continues, “I just told myself that God wouldn’t have allowed me to go through all of this if it’s not for a reason. I’m prepared for the backlash.”
“Josh’s files”
In her book, King places blame for Josh’s actions on a few different sources: abusive Grandpa Duggar (who raised Jim Bob and King’s mother Deanna Duggar), Jim Bob and Michelle for not getting Josh appropriate help at the first sign of trouble and the influence of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), Bill Gothard’s nondenominational fundamentalist Christian organization.
But King wasn’t just a spectator in Josh’s crimes — she was witness to them.
In the book, King says that her father purchased Josh’s old laptop for her. She writes that when she began using the laptop, she discovered examples of child pornography within a folder labeled “Josh’s files.” King showed her mother the files and then deleted them.
King describes her current relationship with Josh. “I haven’t talked to him, and I won’t reach out, and I will not contact him, but my heart goes out to the victims, and it goes out to just anyone who’s ever experienced anything like that,” she says.
King calls it “the weirdest feeling in the world” to know that someone she grew up with behaved in this way.
Breaking the cycle
King says there is “a complete night and day difference” between the way she has seen boys being raised within the IBLP community and the way she and her husband Dillon King are raising their young son, Daxton.
Though he can still get in trouble, they don’t “scold” him for his actions. “Let me tell you, gentle parenting is huge in this house,” King laughs.
They allow Daxton to ask, “Why?” because “we want him to know that we’ll never ask him to do something that’s going to hurt him.” This method stands in stark contrast to the IBLB’s “blanket training” (reacting with physical punishment when a baby crawls beyond a certain boundary) that King describes in the book.
Now 5 years old, Daxton is kindergarten age. King says she homeschools him for about two hours each day.
“Friday is our free day, so we just do whatever he wants to do. I don’t care what it is,” she says. “I’m a ‘Yes Mom,’ and so I don’t say no very often. I say, ‘Hey, let’s find a way to make this possible.’ It’s just really different than what I saw growing up.”
King’s relationship with her cousins
King doesn’t have much contact with her Duggar cousins these days … except one.
“I love Jill,” King says of her cousin Jill Duggar Dillard. “We are very, very close.” They have discussed the subjects “two cousins can talk about that have experienced trauma.”
King says that Dillard’s three boys are her son’s “favorite people.” The Dillards spent the weekend with King’s family in August.
“But as far as everyone else is concerned, unfortunately, no, they haven’t reached out,” King says. “And honestly, I haven’t reached out either.”
King continues, “I’m an open book, and I’ll tell you the truth, but you have to be willing to listen and absorb it and want different for your life. If you don’t, that’s fine. That’s your choice. And I have no ill feelings toward any of them. I’m gonna just do what’s best for me and my family.”
Knowing what she knows now, does she wish she had never appeared on “19 Kids and Counting”?
King, who never seems to be at a loss for words, pauses.
“That’s a hard one,” she says. “Honestly, I don’t think that I would have been a part of a show that had that many secrets. Looking back, if I would have known that, then I would have chosen a quiet life. I just had no idea what was in that family closet.”
Bracing herself for the public response to the book has been “nerve wracking,” King says. “If there is going to be abusive behavior, no matter who it is, I feel like it’s OK to call that out.”
She adds, “If it helps one person who reads this book, it’s 100% worth it to me to call out the stories and call out the darkness.”
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
