Former ’19 Kids and Counting’ star Joseph Duggar is arrested on a child molestation charge

Former reality TV star Joseph Duggar is facing a child molestation charge in Florida, almost five years after his brother Josh, who also starred in the TLC show “19 Kids and Counting,” was convicted of downloading child sexual abuse images.

Joseph Duggar, 31, was arrested in Arkansas, where he lives, and was awaiting extradition to Florida on Thursday. Duggar is charged with lewd and lascivious behavior on a child under 12 years old, according to an arrest affidavit from the Bay County Sheriff’s Office in Panama City, Florida.

Police officers in Tontitown, Arkansas, on Wednesday contacted deputies in Bay County, saying they had interviewed a 14-year-old girl who told them that Duggar had molested her several times during a family trip to Panama City Beach when she was age 9, according to the affidavit.

The girl’s father confronted Duggar about the abuse this week, and the father said Duggar admitted to it. Police officers in Tontitown had the father call Duggar with a detective on the line, and he again admitted to the actions, the arrest affidavit said.

There was no online court docket in Florida for Duggar so it wasn’t known if he had an attorney. Nobody responded immediately to an inquiry made on the Duggar family media request website.

The Tontitown Police Department said in a statement Thursday that the investigation remains open. The police department, located in a 4,300-person town in the Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas, deferred further questions to the Bay County Sheriff’s Office in Florida.

TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting” followed the lives of devout Baptists Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar and their 19 children, all of whose names began with the letter “J.”

TLC canceled the show in 2015 following allegations that Josh Duggar had molested four of his sisters and a babysitter years earlier. Josh Duggar’s parents said he had confessed to the fondling and apologized.

He was sentenced in 2022 to about 12 1/2 years in prison on one count each of receiving and possessing images portraying child sexual abuse.

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Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana contributed to this report.