Josh Duggar Claims He Didn’t ‘Write or Approve’ His 2015 Confession About Sex Addiction in Court Filing
Josh Duggar has made another attempt to have his guilty verdict thrown out as he serves the remainder of his more than 12-year sentence for receiving child pornography.
The disgraced reality star’s latest tactic involved him claiming that TLC threatened to have his family’s show cancelled – or that they could face other potential “contractual penalties” – if he didn’t release a statement on his infidelity and alleged pornography addiction in 2015, after his name was found on a list of Ashley Madison users.
The statement read: “I have been the biggest hypocrite ever. While espousing faith and family values, I have secretly over the last several years been viewing pornography on the internet and this became a secret addiction and I became unfaithful to my wife.”
“I brought hurt and a reproach to my family, close friends and the fans of our show with my actions that happened when I was 14-15 years old,” the statement said, “and now I have re-broken their trust.”
In a recent court filing obtained by The Sun, Duggar, 37, said that he did not “write or approve the creation of this statement” prior to its publication, nor was he given the opportunity to keep it from being released.
“The statement was drafted and issued under immense pressure from representatives of TLC, Discovery Communications and their legal and public relations teams,” the documents read.
Years later, it was then “repeatedly cited to suggest a long-standing pattern of secret pornography use and moral failure” in his bombshell trial – an act Duggar alleged led to a violation of his “constitutional rights” under the “Fifth and Sixth Amendments.”
“The prosecution referenced this statement repeatedly to imply guilt and to create a narrative of hidden sexual addiction and deceit,” the court documents continued, clarifying that Duggar had never been formally diagnosed with a “pornography addiction.”
“The government’s use of a false, externally pressure and unapproved public statement severely prejudiced the jury’s perception of Joshua Duggar,” the filing read.
Duggar was arrested in April 2021 for allegedly downloading child abuse material on his computer. Later that year, he was found guilty of receiving child pornography – which a Homeland Security agent described during a virtual detention hearing as “in the top five of the worst of the worst” they’d ever had to “examine” – and he was sentenced to 151 months behind bars. He was later transferred to Federal Correctional Institution Seagoville in Texas.
The former 19 Kids and Counting star has filed multiple appeals in an attempt to get a new trial since his incarceration, but all have been rejected.
