Jill Duggar Dillard has released new details about her relationship with her parents, claiming her father treats her “worse than [her] pedophile brother” Josh, who is serving 12.5 years in prison for possessing child pornography.
In her new book, Counting the Cost, Dillard opens up about her experience on TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting and how her relationship with her family and life has shifted since the show ended.
In an excerpt published by People, Dillard writes about an encounter she and her husband, Derrick, had with her parents, Jim Bob and Michelle, alongside a mediator. Her parents were upset with Jill about a letter and text message she had sent them, and they wanted an apology. The conversation was tense before it took a turn and, according to Jill, Jim Bob began yelling at her for her “disrespectful” letter.
I was nervous now. I remembered the message, remembered sending it in the hope that it might wake Pops up to how bad I felt things had gotten, to maybe make him give us a little space and let things calm down. I’d written about not wanting to be verbally abused, which was exactly how I’d felt at the time. I’d felt it in El Salvador as well. I wasn’t sure that I could apologize for that. I glanced at Derick as I remained speechless.
Pops must have sensed what I was thinking, because he suddenly stood up. “You’re not going to apologize? Really?”
His voice was loud, and there was an edge to it that I’d rarely heard. The moderator looked pale and was stuck on mute. Derick tensed, and I could feel him getting ready to step in. I squeezed his hand, hoping he’d get the message.
…
Pops took a step toward me, closing the gap. It wasn’t a gesture of reconciliation. It was an act of aggression. He towered over me, his whole body fueled with anger. My face flushed red. My eyes filled with tears. … Pops’ voice was so loud in my ears. His words were like blows. I instinctively tried to protect myself and block him out. I curled up on my seat, trying to find safety in some kind of fetal position.
“You’re guilty!” Pops was yelling, stabbing a finger at me, standing right over me.
Mom started crying. Derick tried to speak, but I pulled him back.
“You want to know why I’m crying?” My voice was cracked, my eyes burning. “It’s that you think I’m some kind of horrible person just because I wear pants and have a nose ring, and yet you see that girl outside and praise her. That’s why I’m crying, Daddy. I’m evolving and changing, just like that girl out there, but you can’t see it. You treat me like I’m a prodigal who’s turned her back on you. You treat me worse than you treat my pedophile brother.”
In response to Jill’s book release, Jim Bob and Michelle released a statement to People.
“We love all of our children very much,” the statement said. “As with any family, few things are more painful than conflicts or problems among those you love. … We do not believe the best way to resolve conflicts, facilitate forgiveness and reconciliation, or to communicate through difficulties is through the media or in a public forum so we will not comment.”
In June, the Duggars were the subject of Amazon Prime’s Shiny Happy People document, which detailed the rise and fall of the Duggars and the dark, inner-workings of the Institute of Basic Life Principles the family was connected to. In the documentary, Jill revealed shocking details about her treatment on the show, including that Jim Bob controlled the family’s finances, and she and her siblings were not fairly compensated for their time on the show.
Jill is not the first Duggar sibling to release a memoir this year. In the spring, younger sister Jinger Duggar Vuolo released Becoming Free Indeed, which focused on her journey of “disentangling” her faith in recent years.
She spoke with RELEVANT about how she’s distanced herself from the doctrine she grew up believing.
“We followed a teacher who taught things that were totally opposite of the Bible, and I would say it was cult-like in nature,” Jinger said. “He would teach a lot of things that were very binding. He was very comfortable placing burdens upon people that he said were Bible but they were actually things the Bible was silent about. So I lived under a lot of fear and superstition. His teachings were full of manipulation. So for the past several years, I’ve been on a journey of disentangling truth from error, finding freedom in Jesus and realizing what the Bible actually says.”
