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Josh Duggar's Brother Will 'Never Stop Loving' Sibling Despite 'Fair' Child Porn Sentence
Jason "Jase" Duggar says "his heart is grieved" over his brother Josh Duggar's "poor decisions," but that he loves him and has forgiven him.
Josh Duggar’s little brother is speaking out to say that he still loves his sibling despite his recent child porn conviction.
Josh Duggar, the 34-year-old former “19 Kids and Counting” star, was sentenced to serve more than over 12-and-a-half years in federal prison on Wednesday after being found guilty last year of receiving and possessing child pornography in 2019.
His little brother Jason "Jase" Duggar, 22, posted a lengthy Instagram story on Thursday in which he addressed the sentence, calling it "fair" and one that would be "considered below the median for the crimes he has committed."
He went on to call his brother’s actions "poor decisions” that affected “those around him, in particular his wife, seven children and our family as a whole."
“My heart is grieved over the choices my brother has made, his actions do not reflect that of a Christian believer and have doubtlessly defamed my Lord and Saviors name!!” Jase wrote. (The Duggar family is known for being devout Independent Fundamentalist Baptists.)
Still, Jase he noted that he has forgiven Josh.
"With that said, I will never stop loving my brother, regardless of what he does, just as my savior has forgiven me so I have forgiven my brother of his wrongdoings!" he wrote.
Prosecutors had sought the maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars for Duggar but many, including Duggar’s mother, reality TV matriarch Michelle Duggar, pleaded for leniency. Duggar's lawyers had asked for five years.
Videos and photos of child porn were discovered on a desktop computer at the reality show star’s used car lot in Springdale, Arkansas in 2019. During his trial, prosecutors argued that data placed him there when the images depicting child pornography were downloaded, The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.
Duggar rose to fame during the TLC show “19 Kids and Counting,” which was canceled in 2015 after an earlier police report was uncovered that accused Duggar of sexually abusing four underage girls, some of whom were his sisters. He was then embroiled in another scandal that same year, after it was revealed that he had been cheating (or trying to cheat) on his wife through the infidelity website Ashley Madison. At the time, he blamed an addiction to pornography.
