Kendra Duggar, the wife of Joseph Duggar from the TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting,” was arrested on child endangerment charges after her husband’s arrest on sex abuse charges, the police department in Tontitown, Ark., said on Friday.
Ms. Duggar, 27, was charged with four counts of endangering the welfare of a minor and four counts of false imprisonment, according to a statement from the police. Mr. Duggar, 31, was charged alongside her.
The arrests were the latest scandal for the Duggars, a conservative Christian family who rose to fame in the late 2000s as they shared their unconventional family life on “19 Kids and Counting.” The show spanned more than 200 episodes and followed Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar as their family grew to include 19 children. Joseph Duggar is one of their oldest sons.
Kendra Duggar was featured in a spinoff of “19 Kids” called “Counting On,” which followed the lives of the Duggar children from the first series as they started families of their own.
Ms. Duggar’s arrest came after Mr. Duggar was arrested on Wednesday on accusations that he engaged in “unlawful sexual activity” with a 9-year-old girl in Florida in 2020, the authorities said. On Friday, Mr. Duggar waived his right to an extradition hearing in Arkansas, which cleared the way for his transfer to custody in Florida, The Associated Press reported.
The original show that brought the Duggars celebrity status was among the top-performing programs on TLC. It was pulled from the airwaves in 2015 after reports that the Duggars’ eldest son, Josh, molested several girls, including four of his sisters, when he was a teenager. While no criminal charges were filed in connection to those allegations, Josh Duggar was later sentenced to more than 12 years in prison in 2022 for downloading images depicting child sexual abuse.
Kendra and Joseph Duggar met and got married in 2017, when she was 19 and he was 23, according to ABC News. They have four children: two girls, ages 6 and 5, and two boys, ages 7 and 3.
In the “Counting On” spinoff, which started after the first show was canceled, Kendra Duggar was shown borrowing maternity clothes from her sisters-in-law as well as attending a marriage retreat with Joseph and other Duggar siblings. Viewers also watched the birth of the couple’s younger daughter in 2021.
The charges against Kendra Duggar are misdemeanor offenses, according to the police statement. The charges against her husband are more serious.
According to a statement from the Bay County Sheriff’s Office in Florida, the father of the victim, who is now 14, confronted Mr. Duggar on March 17 about alleged instances of abuse during a family vacation in 2020. The sheriff’s office said Mr. Duggar “admitted his actions to the victim’s father and to Tontitown detectives.”
Kendra Duggar was released on a $1,470 bond from the Washington County Detention Center at around 6 p.m. on Friday evening, a spokeswoman for the jail confirmed on Saturday, while Joseph Duggar remained in custody. It was not immediately clear if either of them had legal representation.
Hannah Ziegler contributed reporting.
Claire Fahy reports on New York City and the surrounding area for The Times.
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