Reality TV personality Joseph Duggar and wife Kendra — who were charged with multiple counts of child endangerment and false imprisonment in March — withdrew their not guilty pleas Monday.
On March 20, Arkansas’ Tontitown Police Department issued arrest warrants for the couple, who were each charged with four counts of endangering the welfare of a minor and four counts of false imprisonment.
The charges were filed two days after Joseph — a member of the well-known Duggar family from the TLC series “19 Kids and Counting” — was arrested by Bay County sheriff’s deputies on suspicion of molesting a minor in Florida.
Kendra was booked into the Washington County Detention Center on March 20 and released on a $1,470 bond the same day.
The child endangerment charges stemmed from an inspection of the home of the couple, who share four children, People reported at the time, “and the door locks being on the exterior of the doors.”
News station KNWA-TV reported that the Arkansas charges were unrelated, although Tontitown police said the investigation was “launched on the heels of the alleged incident in Florida.”
The couple were due to appear in an Arkansas courtroom Monday but were able to skip the hearing after withdrawing their not guilty plea. Instead, they submitted a plea by order to the court, which, if approved by the judge, would allow them to enter either a guilty plea or no-contest plea — where they would not admit guilt but wouldn’t contest the charges. So they were not required to appear before a judge, and the case has been diverted for a year.
If convicted on all counts, the couple — who were married in 2017 on the TLC spinoff series “Counting On” and have four children together — could face up to eight years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.
The extended Duggar family was first roiled by legal troubles when oldest son Josh, now 38, was accused of molesting five younger girls — four of whom were his sisters — when he was 15. The “19 Kids and Counting” series was subsequently canceled in 2015.
While the statute of limitations had expired on those offenses, Josh was convicted in 2021 on two counts of possessing and receiving child pornography. The incident led to the cancellation of the family’s spinoff series, “Counting On” — which focused on the older children and their families — that same year.
On March 18 of this year, 31-year-old Joseph was arrested in Arkansas on molestation charges that allegedly occurred in Florida, the Bay County sheriff’s office announced in a statement.
According to the the agency, investigators were contacted by a detective with the Tontitown police regarding a report of past sexual abuse allegedly involving Joseph and a 14-year-old girl.
The victim disclosed several incidents that she said involved Joseph and occurred during a family vacation in Panama City Beach, Fla., in 2020. The victim claimed he repeatedly asked her to “sit on his lap” and later touched her genitals and rubbed her thighs. She was 9 years old at the time.
According to sheriff’s officials, Joseph “eventually apologized” to the victim and stopped molesting her. On March 17, the victim’s father confronted Joseph about his actions, which he admitted to both the father and to Tontitown detectives.
The former reality star was arrested in his home state of Arkansas and charged with molestation of a victim younger than 12 and “lewd and lascivious behavior conducted” by an adult.
In April, he pleaded not guilty in a Florida court, following his extradition from Arkansas, and posted a $600,000 bond. Although he was allowed to return home, a Florida judge barred him from contacting anyone younger than 18. In June, he was denied unsupervised visitations with his children.
In the Florida molestation case, Joseph’s next court date is set for Sept. 15.
The Duggar family rose to fame through the long-running TLC reality series “19 Kids and Counting,” which followed a fundamentalist Christian household led by parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, who platformed modest values and religious devotion. Joseph is the third oldest of 10 sons.
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