Baaaack it up here a sec…
It has occurred to me that after inventing time travel, we can’t know for sure we’re not actually entering into an alternate timeline in another universe where Josh had never entered into these acts.
This notion you propose, called an “event,” then takes on a meaning of almost absolute uncertainty.
First, online litigation & cross-examination has failed us. Alas, now perhaps even science itself!
Curse you SCIENCE! Foiled again!
Still not sufficient! You could catch (and even make a video of) him in the act, but how does that prove intent?
Is it possible he did these things with intent? Of course. Is it reasonable to assume intent? I suppose. Does this mean that intent was likely? Well, let’s not overstate the case. Can we accuse him of intent absent proof? Objection, Your Honor! Assumes facts not in evidence!
After all, he could have simply stumbled into the wrong bedroom in the dark and tripped over one of his sisters and, sticking out his arm to break his fall, landed in a circumstantially incriminating position! Who are we to doubt that?
I think they’re washed in the blood of the lamb. Eeeeew.
According to Michelle, for the little ones they fill the tub and bathe the cleanest first. Must be lovely going last. Yuck.
I want to know how they decide the cleanliness ranking. White glove? Smell? Color swatches?
It seems to me such a system would guarantee that the first kid is always the cleanest and the last kid is always the dirtiest.
At some point, children being brought up in a home like this are no better off than a kid in a group home. Except I doubt that kids in a group home are forced to marinate in the ass residue left behind by all the other kids.
Here’s my latest wild ass theory:
This came to light now, despite appearances because a ‘victim’ applied to have the records expunged to protect their identity. I think it will come to light that ‘the’ victim, was a self sacrificing sister protecting the elder brother by getting the record destroyed.
Just as they controlled who they approached to ‘report’ this to, ( a family friend and mandatory reporter who chose not to report, now serving big time as a sex offender!) and controlled the consequences (bible camp and a labourius job!) he faced and what would pass for ‘counselling’ for the victim/sisters (bible camp shaming and blaming!).
They have very carefully controlled every aspect of this up to and including getting the records destroyed. It seems very much to me that these folks are wielding their power and influence with deft and success.
He may have lost his job at Family Research but my money says, in the name of Christian forgiveness he’ll be back there before long. His Dad put him in that job once and he’ll do it again, I predict.
And as the left loses its shit over the hateful bigotry and hypocrisy I believe the right is going to just get all pious with Christian forgiveness.
Maybe. Huckabee is being disemboweled on Facebook.
ETA:direct link.
Woo, late to this party. Stupid work.
The whole thing is sad all around. First and for most because those poor, poor girls. Everything about their faith and families teachings have taught them that they have no agency of choice over their own bodies, and here’s yet another example, and learned so young. My heart aches for them. 
And, yes, even if it isn’t explicitly said to them, when a girl is told that she must watch how she dresses and acts, lest she excite the boys, it’s harmful to her. If she is abused, of course she will come to the logical conclusion that it was her fault. Of course she will.
As for Josh - there’s a lot of discussion about how this can’t be chocked up to “boys will be boys” and I wholeheartedly agree. But Josh wasn’t raised like a normal boy. He was raised in an extremely sexually repressive environment. It’s a little like if your young teen is getting beat up day after day, by a parent or a fellow student, whoever. One day, you come home and they’ve killed the neighbor’s cat. That’s not normal, and if you’re smart, you get them professional help post haste. But I don’t think it makes them a destined abuser, nor a future serial killer. And I don’t think Josh is probably still molesting children, and probably has no real desire to do so.
I still think both he and his family are disgusting human beings, though. They advocate for hate and oppression, and I’d like to think that some of those children will break free of this abusive cult. My sister tells me that one of the daughters isn’t really spoken of on the show, so perhaps they’ve started to do so.
The real question is why we’re following around these disgusting fringe members of our society with a camera and treating them like they’re yet another quirky aspect of American life. This isn’t what America is, and we shouldn’t treat it that way.
Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you’re in that jury room deliberatin’ and conjugatin’ the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.
It’s worse than a group home.
In a group home, the kids would be attending public school. In Duggar land, the kids would be allowed to attend public school, not given bits of education at the dining room table when mommy finds it convenient.
In a group home, the kids would be responsible for themselves and no one else. In Duggar land, Michelle assigns each older child responsibility for a younger child, turning them into a co-parent because she can’t parent all of her kids.
In a group home, the kids would be allowed to choose their own religious beliefs and protected against state intrusion into their spiritual lives. In Duggar land, the kids are given no choice about what to think religiously. Should they choose anything other than fundamentalist Christianity, they will be cast away from the family.
In a group home, the girls would be allowed to wear pants, short sleeved tops and even shorts in the summer. In Duggar land, the girls are only allowed to wear long dresses.
Most importantly of all, in a group home Josh would have been removed by the authorities and his sisters given counseling. In Duggar land, Josh was given no counseling and then allowed to return. His sisters would not have been told to forgive him or pretend his molestation did not happen.
So they’re not only running a group home, they’re running a really crappy group home.
WRT Bricker and the oh-so-clever opprobrium being lavished upon his vaunted (if self-serving) skepticism, the conversation appears to have wandered out into the tall weeds.
Just as a reminder, nothing that has been alleged about Josh Duggar’s behavior toward his sisters and the Mystery Girl has been challenged by Bricker. He is only challenging the assertions that Josh’s parents followed standard Gothardite teachings about how to minister to Josh’s victims and that their default attitude toward the girls is to assume that they somehow were responsible for inspiring Josh’s behavior.
The presumption of Gothardite teachings for the girls in the aftermath of the assault is a perfectly reasonable assumption. We know the abuse went on for awhile. We know they didn’t get him ANY kind of counseling. We apparently don’t know exactly how they told the girls to respond to the abuse. We don’t know that because even though they’ve told us just about everything else (including extremely precise details about Michelle Duggar’s menstrual cycles and birthing details – hell I knew the day she gave birth prematurely to Josie because it was all over the news) we don’t know exactly what they did.
Make that “inspiring and allowing” and I’ll still say that it has been established beyond reasonable doubt that they were. The Law may make allowances for Josh’s behavior because of his age at the time, but Mom and Dad cannot claim they were following the tenets of their religion and outside the strictures of the law and expect to get off in this country. Well, maybe in Arkansas.
As for Josh’s age, Bricker should recall that he was TWICE the Catholic Church’s “age of reason,” the point where a child begins to be morally responsible, and well into puberty, when he became fully responsible. No more youthful indiscretions for him by the religious law Bricker follows.
I know. I agree that Bricker’s defense of the parents is misguided. I’m just pointing out that the criticism of him in the posts I quoted seems to suggest that he’s also misguidedly defending Josh. I’m all for castigating Bricker’s wrongness. But it seems that we should stick to castigating him for the things he’s actually wrong about.
It looks like he may have withdrawn from the discussion*, but if he reads this I hope he recognizes the irony of what I’m doing here. 
*or he may be spending the holiday with his real family, instead of his SDMB family. If so, I hope he’s getting maximum joy out of it. And I hope the same for you. 
That is a valid point. It’s easy for the mocking to cover the whole situation, but he really was challenging the assumptions about counseling, not the abuse itself. Not even Josh is denying that abuse occurred. So I do apologize for the contributions I made that helped a pile-on.
Sorry but I would disagree. That may have been his concern, but his compulsion was on overdrive and he shit on that thread. He could not let it go. And his real obsession was that Honey used the word “likely”. This is not his first rodeo. He is an intelligent grown man, and should know how to communicate without that much drama. He made the discussion about semantics and once again derailed the topic.
Granted, but the mocking did grow to encompass an area that he did not in fact try to defend. shrug Ultimately, I don’t want to contribute to his whole “No liberal ever tries to correct another liberal on this board!” shtick.
Actually I was quite impressed with your contributions. And I feel comfortable Bricker earns his mocking through his own efforts.