mynextmistake

Oh, I agree. CPS removing the kids is (and should be) the last resort, and I don’t think that will happen initially. I do think that enough has gone on here that CPS could have grounds to put Anna on a case plan, with conditions — the Ms all get interviewed by CPS, the family is referred for counseling services, Anna is only allowed to leave them with approved babysitters, etc. And she would actually have to do these things — CPS will remove kids if their parents refuse to comply with the terms of a protective case plan. You don’t get a ton of chances. Frankly, given Josh’s conviction and Jana’s child endangerment case, it wouldn’t surprise me if Arkansas CPS is already getting some side eye about the deference with which they have treated this family. The family has been allowed to dictate the terms of their engagement with the system, and I think that at least is going to come to an end now. In terms of why the family moving in with the Rebers would be a violation, Josh was only allowed to have contact with the Ms if Anna supervised them. If they were all there 24/7, there’s no way the court would believe she was supervising them all the time. She has to sleep, shower, run errands, and use the toilet sometime.

WOACB is now saying that Anna is being investigated for child abandonment and might lose the kids. They claim she was pressuring Josh to allow the whole family to move into the Reber’s place, and he told her no because he didn’t want his bond revoked. When she had to choose, she chose to be at the Rebers and left her kids with the Duggars. While I think Anna is a useless human being, and I think it’s possible her kids would be better off in a different home, I can’t imagine this is true? Leaving your kids with adult relatives isn’t abandonment unless you completely disappear, and I’m sure she went back to check on them sometimes. Unless this is in some way tied to the Jana incident? Like Anna just dropped the kids off without talking to Jana first and Jana told the cops that when they showed up with whatever M kid got loose? This wouldn’t surprise me, actually.

Passive aggressive dog: ”No, really, please finish the kibble. I’m stuffed. Besides, I just couldn’t pull off that extra-large collar as well as you do.” ”Oh, you want me to bring back that Frisbee? The one you just threw over there? Well, my paw has been bothering me a bit since the tennis ball incident last week, but I guess I’ll go get it. No, it’s okay, you stay here. I know you work hard. Sitting at that computer all day must be exhausting.” “Oops, did I poop in your shoes again? I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to. I guess when you refuse to let me out at 2 am, I can’t always hold it.” Sorry, after this week I could use some levity. Josh is such a monster.

I have no doubt that many of the Duggars were stunned by Josh’s conviction. While it is funny that JB told the judge he “wasn’t going to allow” evidence of Josh’s perpetration of sexual abuse to be introduced at trial, it’s also kind of chilling and a good example of how these people really think. In Duggar world, Josh and JB are more important than everyone else simply by virtue of being white Christian males. They call the shots. They don’t suffer consequences, they levy them. How dare a jury including women and non-Christians and possibly even people of color sit in judgment of Josh? That’s not how things are supposed to work! As to whether they actually believe he’s innocent, I don’t know. I think Anna has gotten used to deluding herself in order to survive her marriage, and I think she might be so good at it now that she really believes this is all some kind of persecution. I think JB and Michelle are more realistic about Josh’s true nature than many people think, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew, deep down, that he was capable of doing something like this. I also think it’s telling that so few of Josh’s siblings were at the trial, and that those that were weren’t necessarily there to support him. The fact that the rest of them stayed the hell away makes me think that they have at least entertained the possibility that he’s guilty and are trying to distance themselves.

Mr. Mistake was once on a jury that deliberated for two days on a misdemeanor shoplifting charge. Apparently 11 of them wanted to convict, and the sole holdout was a lady whose reason for wanting to acquit was that she didn’t trust the police because she lived next door to a police officer once and the runoff from his roof during a hurricane flooded her garage. People are strange. I don’t think there’s any way that a replay of Josh’s interview helps Josh. I think there are a lot of technical details in this case and it might take the jury a while to sort through the testimony. This is a good thing. We want juries to be thorough.

The defense strategy in seven words: the router did it, you must acquit.

Also we have to keep in mind that jurors are regular people and this jury is not fully sequestered. Some of the jurors might have had to pick up their kids or do other ordinary life things. A jury is not always going to be able to stay late to deliberate.

The Sun is speculating that a verdict will be returned today due to Anna just being seen at the courthouse. I have no idea if that is reliable information. If the jury is back this fast, it’s almost certainly a guilty verdict.

They’ve been out for like two hours. They’re probably eating lunch. A verdict in a case with this much technical evidence is not going to be instantaneous.

Reports from the other thread are that Jill and Joy are both in the gallery and are visibly upset. Derick has his arm around Jill and Austin is “staring into space.”

“Josh Duggar is either innocent or guilty.” I don’t know about you, but I think it’s this kind of in-depth analysis and courage to take a stand that makes People magazine great.

Over in the Josh and Anna thread, someone posted a People magazine article in which Derick said he thought Josh was guilty. So I guess he wasn’t at the trial to support Josh!

I think Michelle cares about Josh and Josie, because Josh is her oldest son and Josie is walking antiabortion propaganda, and I think JB cares about Michelle. I think that neither of them cares at all about any of their other 17 kids, as evidenced by everything you said here. Regarding luxury mobile homes, my MIL made me go with her on a tour of a 55+ luxury mobile home community in the sun belt and some of those places were swank.

She looks almost as upset as Joy did in the pictures from yesterday. It makes Josh and Anna’s smirking and Jason’s mugging for the camera outside courthouse even more disgusting. I hope she is getting support from Derick and his family, and her friends. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Anna made an exception to the 67 day rule and has been joyfully available like her life depended on it. If Josh goes down for 5-7 years, it’s going to be awfully hard for her to break ten kids. She might be trying to squeeze in one more before the cell doors clang shut. If Josh is convicted, I wonder what CPS involvement there will be after he is released? He will be a registered sex offender. The judge was only willing to allow him to be around his kids while on bail if Anna supervised them, and I would think any sensible family court judge would realize that post-release, Anna will not be able to ensure that he is never alone with any of their seven kids. In my admittedly lay opinion, Arkansas CPS has been pretty lax in their protection of Josh’s kids to date, but they won’t be able to ignore the fact that he’s a registered sex offender with a predilection for young kids. I know women in similar situations who were forced to divorce or separate from their spouses in order to keep their kids. Sadly, if given this choice, I’m not 100% sure Anna wouldn’t pick Josh, but that’s a whole different discussion.

Well, I wasn’t there, but I assume that the jury was not in the room when the contact took place. The people from the gallery (which is just a fancy term for the spectator seating in a courthouse) are allowed to interact with the defendant on breaks and such, but the jury isn’t in the courtroom during breaks. They are waiting in the jury room. When the jury is in the courtroom, there should be no contact between the defendant and anyone other than his or her legal team, for exactly this reason — the court doesn’t want to take the risk that witnessing contact would prejudice the jury either for or against the defendant.

The people in the gallery aren’t allowed to interact with the defendant while the jury is in the courtroom. This is presumably a well-attended trial; the gallery is probably crowded and the jury doesn’t have any way to know that the Duggars are Josh’s family members, or that they are there to support him.

Based on what I’ve read so far, I think Josh was screwed the minute Bobye Holt testified. Maybe — maybe — without that testimony the case putting Josh at the car dealership while the CSM material was downloaded would have been circumstantial enough that the defense expert could have made the jurors believe that Josh, a loving and decent family man with no attraction to children, was the victim of some kind of complex hacking incident. Maybe. But the moment they heard he was a child molester? Bye bye, reasonable doubt. You have an admitted child molester at a car lot by himself at the time CSM material is downloaded and you expect a jury to believe that it was a terrible coincidence? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it. I did have a question. The people article talks about Bobye Holt’s testimony and says she testified that Josh admitted to touching girls aged 12-15. Did she not testify about the younger victim, the 6-year-old? Because I think that would be an important thing for the prosecution to get into evidence.

Oh, my mistake. I thought she and Bobye Holt were added to the prosecution list after the judge ruled that the propensity evidence is admissible.

If Jill was going to be testifying for Josh she’d be on the defense witness list, not the prosecution’s.

If Jill is on the prosecution’s witness list, it is because they have met with her, probably several times, and know exactly what she is going to say. There is no way a federal prosecutor is going to call an unprepared witness at trial. If they had concerns about JB’s influence on her, those would have been addressed in pretrial meetings and the consequences of untruthful testimony would have been explained to Jill. I’m sure Derick has also discussed her obligation to testify truthfully with her at length — as someone who presumably has hopes of becoming a licensed attorney, he can’t afford to be married to a perjurer. I don’t think Jill is willing to risk her liberty, her marriage, and her reputation for the promise of family monopoly nights and frito pie. More importantly, I think that Jill has reached a place that none of her sisters have. I think she now understands that, no matter what JB and Michelle said about Jesus and forgiveness and whatever, what Josh did to her and her sisters was WRONG. I think she knows that downloading CSAM is wrong too. I think that Jill has a moral compass, and while it might be calibrated differently from mine, I think it does matter to her. I don’t think Jill wants to testify. I think it’s going to be very hard for her. But if she has to do it, I think she’s going to tell the truth, because that’s the right thing to do, and I think there’s nothing JB can offer her that’s going to change that.

Why does it matter?

Jill is limiting her family size. She’s been open about the fact that they were using birth control to prevent pregnancy for several years after Sam was born, and I don’t think that the fact they’re trying for a third means they’re opening the floodgates to endless procreation. A ton of my (non-fundie) friends have three kids, especially when their first two are the same gender. Really, the only Duggar daughter/DILs I see who might rival Michelle for fecundity are Kendra, who seems on track to have 20+ kids unless something changes, and possibly Joy, although I question whether she and Austin really want zillions of kids.

I don’t think even a redneck patriarchy-lovin’ religious zealot is going to be on Team Josh here. Child sex abuse seems to be the one thing that pretty much everybody except actual pedophiles still agrees is beyond the pale. And while he will obviously have some leeway to present his defense, I don’t think the judge is going to allow Josh’s lawyers to make the trial about American politics or religion.

There have been a number of interviews in which sources who know the family state that Anna is spending most of her time at the Reber house with Josh. Many of them have been mentioned in this thread. I don’t think anyone has come out and said it was great for JB, Michelle, and Anna to let Josh be around their kids, but there have been a number of posts that minimize their poor decision making in this area. People have said that JB and Michelle did the best they could (they didn’t), that the consequences they imposed were harsh and appropriate to Josh’s wrongdoing (they weren’t), that the steps they took were more than other families did (sadly probably true but still utterly inadequate), claiming there was nothing that could have been done to stop Josh (not true), saying Anna can’t help it because she’s brainwashed (again, sadly probably true but still utterly inadequate), chiding Anna’s detractors by saying the past months have been horrible for Anna (who cares, she still needs to protect her damn kids), etc.

And some posters might fiercely criticize Jill and Derick or Jeremy and Jinger for doing things that are nowhere near as horrible as downloading CSA while thinking it’s not such a big deal that JB, Michelle and Anna jeopardized the safety of their kids by allowing a child molester to be around them all the time. 🤷‍♀️ Different things bother different people. I would imagine that the past several months have probably also been pretty awful for Anna’s kids, who might be expected to need the close support of their mother to get through it. If Anna occasionally gets a babysitter so she can attend court hearings, that’s one thing. But if she’s leaving the kids with relatives 24/7 so she can go hang out with Josh at the Reber house, that’s entirely different. Her primary responsibility right now is to her children. They deserve a mother who puts their needs first, not the needs of their loser pedophile father.