The most surprising and perhaps even noteworthy part of the Duggars’ interview with Fox News Wednesday night came at the tail end:
A sneak preview of Jill and Jessa Duggar speaking with Megyn Kelly about how Josh Duggar molested them when they were younger.
For a brief but powerful moment, Jessa Seewald and Jill Dillard (both Duggar girls married in 2014) spoke out last night about Josh.
They were two of the five underage girls molested by the eldest of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s 19 Kids & Counting as a teenager.
The sisters told Kelly that they were overwhelmed when they learned that their story – long kept confidential by police had gone viral.
"We are victims, they can’t do this to us," Jill, 24, said through tears of the attention focused on her and her family amid the scandal.
Jessa, 22, added that "the system that was set up to protect kids" failed to do so, and they are paying a far, far greater price now.
"Both those who make stupid mistakes or have problems like this and the ones that are affected by those choices. It’s greatly failed."
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar also told Fox News that the police were bribed to leak the scandal in a plot to expose and ruin the family.
Clearly, it was their strategy going into the interview to reframe the discussion, but it is very much unclear how and why the file leaked.
It has since been destroyed, but to Jessa and Jill, that’s little consolation now, as they’ve had to "relive the horror" like never before.
While Jessa admitted that what their brother did was "very wrong," she decried people calling Josh a child molester, pedophile or rapist.
"I’m like, that is so overboard and a lie really," she said, emotionally. "I mean, people get mad at me for saying that but I can say this."
"Because," she says, "I was one of the victims."
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