The Duggar family—along with friends like former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee—have been very hesitant to say anything critical about Josh Duggar, who, over the past year, admitted to sexually molesting his younger sisters, suffering from a porn addiction, and signing up for the cheating website Ashley Madison, all while serving as the executive director of the conservative Christian group the Family Research Council, which lobbies for “traditional family values” and has been labeled a homophobic hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
But now in a New Year’s blog post, his cousin Amy King (formerly Amy Duggar) shared some seriously harsh reflections about how his indiscretions affected her 2015.
Calling her past year an “emotional rollercoaster,” Amy recounted how her then-boyfriend Dillon King was hit by a drunk driver, his marriage proposal to her a few months later, and the moment when she first heard about her cousin Josh’s troubles while she was getting fitted for her wedding dress.
“September was a doozie! Life was just wonderful…drum roll please…until one of my family members made some terrible confessions,” she wrote. “I knew nothing of the molestation charges, and I had no idea what the Ashley Madison site even was? I was completely shocked just like the rest of the world.”
“A million questions flooded my mind,” she added, before dropping a bomb on her cousin. “Rage came over me, sadness crept in, and reality sat in that the person I had known my entire life turned out to be a fraud, and a complete stranger. I’ve always heard that there were people in this world that lived a double life, but I never thought that someone so close to home would be living a lie.”
Despite her disappointment in Josh, Amy apparently remains close to his wife, Anna Duggar, who has stuck by his side despite everything he has put her through. Discussing her September wedding, Amy wrote, “Everyone we knew and loved attended including Anna Duggar. Her attendance really touched me, after all she has and still is going through she wanted to be there for our special day.”
Finally, in a list of things she has learned over the past year, Amy added this note about Josh’s wife: “Anna and I have gotten a lot closer this year, I’m grateful for that family love/friendship.”
She may not be one of the 19 Kids and Counting on the Duggar family reality show, but Amy has appeared on the program, which chronicled her aspiring country music career. Back in October, she told Us magazine that she had spoken to Anna Duggar and she was surprisingly “good” with the situation. “She’s strong,” Amy said. “I wouldn’t be handling it quite the same way."
Then, in an Instagram post last month, Amy responded to a follower who asked how she can stay so positive in the midst of the controversy. “I have my faith in God,” she wrote. “The whole entire family is crushed, I’m mentally worn out! My savior is my everlasting rock and what someone else does, and the choices that someone else makes (even though it makes me furious) it doesn’t fall on me, on my future marriage or my personal relationship with Christ.”
But the latest blog post is the first time she denounced her cousin’s actions so directly. It has now been more than four months since the Duggar family said in a statement that Josh had “checked himself into a long-term treatment center.” And there has been no official news from the family about his progress since.
Just this past week, however, People magazine reported that Anna had traveled from her home in Arkansas to the rehab center in Illinois to visit Josh for Christmas, a move that further signals they will not be separating any time soon.