David Luces
Staten Island Advance, N.Y.
May 26—STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Josh Duggar, the former reality TV star, has been sentenced to 12.5 years in prison for receiving and possessing child pornography, according to multiple media reports.
Duggar, 34, was found guilty of the charges back in December 2021, CNN reported.
He was also sentenced to 20 years of supervised release by US District Judge Timothy Brooks. Duggar will be forced to pay a $10,000 fine and is ordered to have no unsupervised contact with minors during his supervised release.
He is the oldest son of Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar, whose Christian family was the subject of the TLC show “19 Kids and Counting.”
Duggar was accused of downloading child porn into a computer at his used car dealership — that has since been closed — over the course of three days in May 2019, according to the New York Post.
In May 2021, a federal agent testified that at least 65 images of child porn were on Duggar’s computer. A two-minute video that showed a man sexually abusing two girls aged between 5 and 10 years old was found on the computer, the New York Post reported.
“Duggar has a deep-seated, pervasive, and violent sexual interest in children,” Dustin Roberts, assistant U.S. Attorney, wrote in a sentencing memo.
A family friend of Duggar testified during the trial that he had talked about downloading a software that would help with privacy on his computer. He then installed a password-protected software on his hard drive, which he used to download porn, The New York Post reported.
___
(c)2022 Staten Island Advance, N.Y.
Visit Staten Island Advance, N.Y. at www.silive.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.