Ex-Family Friend: Josh Duggar Admitted to Abusing Underage Girls in 2003

Disgraced former reality star Josh Duggar told a one-time family friend nearly two decades ago that he had molested multiple young girls, she testified in court on Monday. Duggar, a former star of TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, has been charged with “knowingly” receiving and possessing material depicting the sexual abuse of children under the age of 12.

In 2003, Bobye Holt said at the trial, a then-15-year-old Duggar first told her he had touched four underage children on their breasts and vaginal areas, sometimes under their “pantaloons and underwear.” Duggar told Holt that in some cases he had touched girls while holding them on his lap “during Bible time” or while they were sleeping, she said. At least one victim was as young as 5 years old. “You don’t forget something like that,” an emotional Holt added on the witness stand.

Duggar’s defense team had previously tried to have Holt’s testimony, first given at a pretrial hearing last week, thrown out. His attorneys argued Duggar was never charged over the allegations, rendering them irrelevant. U.S. District Timothy Brooks disagreed, stating in an order that “the child pornography victims in this case are approximately the same ages as the victims of defendant’s hands-on child-molestation offenses.” The jury must decide unanimously whether to use Holt’s testimony as evidence in the case.