Despite Josh Duggar’s controversial past, Amy (Duggar) King is still supporting Anna Duggar. Josh, who is now 35 years old, has admitted to abusing several young girls, including his younger sisters Jill (Duggar) Dillard and Jessa (Duggar) Seewald, when he was between ages 12 and 15. Josh also got caught up in the whole Ashley Madison scandal, a website that facilitates extramarital affairs.
Josh’s arrest and conviction for possessing and receiving illicit child materials (if you know what I mean) has been a low point for his family who has faced multiple scandals in the past. While many family members such as Anna have either stayed silent or supported Josh, King believes it is her responsibility to speak out.
Despite condemning Josh’s actions strongly, King has made an effort to provide support to his 34-year-old wife.
“With Anna, I have tried. I have sent text messages, I have sent emails. I’ve tried, I’ve tried,” King, 36, told PEOPLE. “I don’t know if her phone’s being monitored. I don’t know if she’s turned it off [and] she’s gotten a new one. I’ve tried on Instagram, I’ve tried on Twitter. She wants nothing to do with it at all, and that’s her decision.”
King continues, “I understand she has a lot of kids, and I understand that she’s in a very broken place, I’m sure. I don’t want to speak for her. I’m sure that is just heartbreaking, but I also don’t necessarily think she sees it yet. I think it’s going to take a really long time. And if she ever does reach out, I am here for her.”
“My husband [Dillon] and I actually were talking when all this first came out, and I said, ‘Honey, we have room to welcome all of those kids and Anna into our home. We have bunk beds, we could do something really cool,'” she recalls. “And he was like, ‘You’re right.’ He was like, ‘We could.’ He was like, ‘Let’s reach out and see what we can do.'”
“I offered it, and that’s really all I can do is just hope and pray that she opens her eyes. That’s all you can do,” she says. “Honestly, it sucks. It just sucks because I want to be there and I want to help, and it doesn’t have to involve cameras or fame or anything. It’s just family reaching out to family. Unfortunately, she doesn’t see it.”
Although she was willing to help Anna, King was not willing to be as generous to her cousin Josh.
“Josh, I will not reach out to, honestly, because it’s just so heartbreaking. I can’t, I literally can’t, and I don’t want to,” she explains. “I’ll just be honest. … His hand was stuck and found in the cookie jar with Ashley Madison. His hand was stuck in the cookie jar when the [abuse] stuff about the precious sisters [Jill and Jessa] came out. And his hand was stuck again in the cookie jar when the last scandal, it just took the cake.”
“It’s so filthy and so wrong and so evil, and I hate it. It just hurts my heart so much. I’m not going to reach out. I am done with that. It’s just so sad. So for me, I won’t reach out.”
King was determined to bring his commitment to Prime Video’s Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets docuseries, which documents the scandals involving Josh and other controversies surrounding the Duggar family and their extremely conservative religious values. King felt it was vital to be involved in the project to speak up for survivors of the Institute in Basic Life Principles and its teachings.
“I am not the type to hold back, and I just feel like as I get older, my voice is getting louder about things,” she says of choosing to appear. “Obviously, I prayed about it, talked to my husband, and I was like, ‘I think this is a really great move. It would be in front of a lot of people.’ It’s not about fame and it’s not about notoriety, it’s literally about just the hurting survivors and how much they have survived.”
She concludes, “I watched the documentary just the other day, and there’s so many people that just came out of so much fear and anxiety and shame. It’s like, ‘You don’t have to live like that.’ So I’m excited just to be a part of it.”
