Josh Duggar flashed “the creepiest smile” when his cousin Amy Duggar confronted him about molesting his sisters.
In May 2015, it was revealed that the “19 Kids and Counting” star had inappropriately touched five female victims, four of whom included his then-underage sisters (aged 1 to 4), in the early 2000s.
Josh, who was a preteen when the forcible fondling first began, admitted to it but was never charged.
When the news was made public, Amy confronted him and asked him why he never tried to hurt her in a similar way, according to an excerpt from her forthcoming memoir, “Holy Disruptor: Shattering the Shiny Facade by Getting Louder with the Truth,” obtained by People.
Amy, 39, told the outlet that Josh responded by saying he “knew better” than to try to touch her.
“It was the creepiest smile,” she recalled. “In that moment, I just looked at him, and I was just like, ‘I don’t know you at all.’”
Amy was both horrified and heartbroken, as the cousin she knew and loved felt like a complete stranger.
“It’s that realization that all the times he’s texted and laughed and we’ve sent memes to each other and he called and we had double dates and all the things — I’m like, ‘I don’t know you at all,’” she lamented, calling the situation “very sad and terrifying.”
Amy said she “wasn’t getting any answers” from Josh, but she’s not one to “back down.” So in the process of writing her book, she contacted his fifth victim because she wanted to tell the whole story without “blindsid[ing] her.
“I was like, ‘I just want to honor your story, and I want people to know that I respect you,’” Amy explained.
“I even told her, ‘If you don’t want me to write about anything in the book or put you even in there as a fifth victim, I’m OK with that, too.’”
Amy believes her “entire book will drop jaws.”
Josh, 37 — who shares seven children with his wife, Anna Duggar — is currently three years into his 12-and-a-half-year prison sentence for receiving and possessing child pornography.
When he first learned his fate in May 2022, Amy told her Instagram followers that she wished he had received the maximum sentence of 20 years he was facing.
However, she was relieved that “another monster” was getting put behind bars, where “the prisoners [would] take care of him.”
Amy told People she now has a “tiny, tiny, very small, very minute amount” of “grace” for Josh, noting that a teen his age should have been able to go to his parents and say, “Hey, I’ve got this issue. I need to talk to someone about it.”
According to Amy, Josh’s misconduct got “pushed aside” and was “not really dealt with.”
“[It was] more of like, ‘Hey, OK, we’re going to send you here and just get you out of the house, and they’ll talk to you there as you build houses,’ or whatever. That’s not true help,” she argued.
When Josh first told Jim Bob about his misconduct, the patriarch claims he disciplined him.
After the second confession, Jim Bob spoke to church elders and agreed to put his eldest son in a Christian counseling program. Michelle told people at the time that Josh was staying with a family friend.
Following another admission, Jim Bob spoke to a family friend who was an Arkansas state trooper at the time, Joseph Hutchens (who is now behind bars on child porn charges). Hutchens met with Josh and gave him a “stern talk,” but no official report was filed.