Go Ahead, Call Amy Duggar King Crazy
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More than a decade ago, Amy Duggar King was introduced to the world with adjectives she never chose: crazy, rebellious, and wild.
“I was a fish out of water all the time,” King, 36, tells Vanity Fair.
King was juxtaposed against her conservative Duggar cousins in more than 100 episodes of TLC’s reality series, 19 Kids and Counting—a show that chronicled Jim Bob and Michelle and their growing brood of children. “My uncle had control over a lot of the show, [including] what happened and who was on it,” she says. King thinks the series intentionally used her as a distraction from the uglier realities of life as an IBLP family. “Why else would I be targeted like that? There was a major thing going on that could be detrimental to the wealth of the show, and the popularity of the show.”
The major problem King references is eldest Duggar son Josh Duggar, and allegations that he molested four of his sisters. King tells Vanity Fair she found out about the allegations “like the rest of the world”—on the news, when word broke in 2015.
“I was pissed,” she says, and immediately heartbroken for her cousins. “I felt like I wasn’t worth telling … that they didn’t want to protect me. They didn’t want anyone to know, [and] they wanted to keep it inside their little bubble. Secrets breed in the IBLP. Things are hidden.”
Josh released a statement admitting wrongdoing and apologized. While he was never criminally charged and was instead sent to a faith-based counseling camp by his parents, King says she confronted her cousin face-to-face about the molestation allegations.
“He was staying in a trailer and I went in there and I said, ‘How could you do this? … And I was very bold about that,” King explains, adding Josh admitted he did not attempt anything physical with her because “he knew better.” King says her cousin knew what he was doing and intentionally chose to prey upon girls who wouldn’t speak out against him. She believes the ideology behind IBLP, which preaches the superiority of men, “absolutely” empowered Josh.
“The IBLP prizes the first child, [and] it doesn’t get much better than if it’s a son. They hold the family name and the family value,” she says. “If you’re valued from the moment you’ve been born and people hide your secrets and cover up things, and you never get in trouble for the things that you’re doing, I believe you just become numb to how the world really is, and how the law really is. It’s so sad how far it was taken, where he thought he could get away with anything.”
King calls her aunt and uncle covering up Josh’s behavior at the expense of their daughters “cringe-worthy” and “evil.”
“To think that someone holds a higher value than someone else is just so disgusting,” she says. She’s had conversations with her female cousins about the alleged assault as well, but intends to keep those conversations private.
Content retrieved from: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/06/go-ahead-call-amy-duggar-king-crazy.
