Link – Duggar Sisters Sue Over Breach of Privacy
It was revealed in 2015 that Josh Duggar had molested multiple underage girls when he was a teenager, four of whom were his sisters. CBS News now reports that Jill, Jessa, Jinger and Joy Duggar are suing the city and police of Springdale and Washington County, Arkansas over leaked documents related to the 2006 investigation into the molestation that took place when the sisters were underage.
The sisters are also suing the publishers of InTouch Weekly, as the magazine published the story. The Duggars allege that the city and county provided documents to the magazine that contained enough information to identify them as Josh’s victims.
InTouch reportedly filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2015 to obtain the documents and published at least eight stories about the investigation. According to Arkansas law, however, police are forbidden from sharing specific information related to the sexual abuse of a child.
That’s not a message I want to send. It’s hard enough for children to come forward, lets not give them public examples of how being a victim makes it open season for anyone to talk about you and your family.
I hope they win, and the next time someone famous is accused of sexual abuse, law enforcement agencies think twice about sharing files with the media.
http://spasique.com/duggar-sisters-sue-over-breach-of-privacy-in/
Photo by hyku 
I respectfully disagree. Since the Duggar family is in the media’s eyes and they hold themselves up as an exemplary family I think the public has the right to know. We only know of five or six victims of Josh Duggar. The Duggar family used their public stature to enable Josh to avoid any legal consequences as required by law. They used their power and fame to beat the judicial system. They are not just a TV family but they are also a political family that use their media power and their money to influence public policy and they pose with political fissures such as Mike Huckabee and many others. When you become a political figure as well as a media giant then the public had a right to know. I am a survivor of sibling sexual abuse and I come from a political family. So many people were willing to overlook my visible signs of physical and sexual abuse because I came from a ‘political’ family. I wonder what measures are being taken to keep Josh away from the ever growing and ever younger Duggars.
Andrea, in regards to Josh, and the parents, I would tend to agree. They made their choice to be a public, and political family, and they used connections to escape any sort of criminal charges against Josh, so that getting out and embarrassing them is too bad. The lawsuit though, is about the girls, who were children at the time. Underage victims of sexual abuse are generally afforded the right to privacy. It’s their choice to have it be public knowledge that they were a victim, or whether they can remain anonymous. As the linked article points out, that is even the law where they live, and it was what they were promised by law enforcement then they did make a statement. So for the police to release that information would be illegal. The public may have a right to know about the truth of abuse and how the parents connections helped, but iI don’t think we have a right to know the details about the girls. Similarly, if someone who was not one of their children had accused Josh (and we don’t know for sure that didn’t happen…) would it be right that they were identified? If not, then it’s not right that the Duggar girls were either.