On May 4, prior to his detention hearing, Josh Duggar, who is 33 years old and is the father of six children with a seventh on the way, and his legal team filed a motion asking for permission to see his wife and children. A day later, during his detention hearing, Judge Christy Comstock said she “cannot in good conscience” release Duggar to his wife and six children.
Currently, Duggar and his wife of 13 years Anna are expecting their seventh child. They announced they are expecting their fourth daughter just days before Josh was arrested and charged with receiving and possession of child pornography on April 30.
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After pleading not guilty to the charges against him, Josh and his legal team filed a motion asking the court to “permit him to return home to his immediate family” ahead of his July trial. While the motion was not granted, he was granted bail.
How Will Josh Duggar Be Allowed to See His Own Children?
Now, he will live with third-party custodians, who are also longtime close family friends of the Duggar family, Lacount and Maria Reber. He will be monitored with GPS tracking until his trial begins at the beginning of July.
However, while he may not able to visit his wife and children at their home, according to reports, his wife and children will be allowed to visit him. Although Judge Comstock said she “cannot in good conscience” release Duggar to his wife and six children, she did grant him “unlimited contact” with the kids, so long as Anna is present.
With that said, supervised or not, Josh will not be allowed around any other minors, including his younger siblings and his nieces and nephews, People reported.
“I recommend that you govern your actions by thinking about where you might go and who you might encounter,” Judge Comstock told Duggar. “You might not ought to go to birthday parties, family dinners, church activities. These things that might risk violating this condition, do you understand?”
Duggar replied, saying he understood.
As Mamas Uncut previously reported, Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Gerald Faulkner testified for the prosecution during the hearing.
He told the court that files allegedly found on Josh Duggar’s computer revealed the sex abuse of a child ranging from 18 months to 12 years of age. He added that the images were “in the top five of the worst of the worst that I’ve ever had to examine.”
The files were reportedly discovered on the computer Duggar used while working at his Wholesale Motorcars dealership. It was a computer that had software on it that alerted Anna if he was visiting any distasteful websites. This software is often used for those struggling to overcome an addiction to pornography.
However, Duggar had allegedly been using a password-protect network which did not register through the “Covenant Eyes” software. During the 2019 raid of his business, Agent Faulkner also revealed that when asked if he had seen or was in possession of child sex abuse materials, Duggar responded by saying, “I’d rather not answer that question.”
If convicted of the charges against him, Josh Duggar faces up to 20 years of imprisonment and fines up to $250,000 on each count.
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