Thanks to the chilling documentary, Shiny Happy People, many people are learning the sickening truth about the Duggar parents and IBLP.
Jill has spoken about everything from Jim Bob taking the family’s earnings to the pressures to cover up Josh’s crimes.
There has been backlash — from her horrible parents and from diehard supporters of this toxic cult.
Through it all, Jill is happy to have the support of one person — her husband.
“I’m so incredibly grateful for my man,” Jill Duggar wrote on Instagram on Monday, June 5.
She tagged her husband, Derick Dillard. And she then included a red heart emoji.
“His support means the world to me,” Jill gushed, followed by a sunshine emoji. “Thanks, babe!” The affectionate emojis continued.
While many people have complicated feelings about this couple (often more negative about Derick, which is entirely his doing), one can understand the source of Jill’s sentiment.
She and her husband — who will, next year, have been married for one decade — are a hot topic at the moment.
Together, the Dillards spoke out in Amazon Prime’s Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets. That stunning documentary premiered late last week.
Like so many others, Jill is a survivor of the dangerous and cruel teaching of the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP). This sinister code guided the Duggar family, to the detriment of their children.
Since the documentary aired, other — non-famous — survivors have spoken up on social media. The chilling stories from the Amazon Prime special carried echoes of their own trauma.
Sadly, many people did not realize how vile IBLP or Jim Bob and Michelle truly were until Josh Duggar’s various crimes brought added scrutiny.
When Josh Duggar was a teenager, he preyed upon numerous young girls, including four of his own sisters. Jill was one of the survivors.
For years, Jim Bob worked to cover up his eldest son’s crimes.
Then, when the world learned about it, Jim Bob marched Jill and Jessa onto that hack, Megyn Kelly’s, erstwhile show. There, he had them downplay Josh’s crimes.
At the time, the Duggar family’s attitude was essentially that Satan — the literal devil — was attacking them by exposing Josh’s crimes.
We have to remember that their deeply insular lifestyle and their worldview lend themselves to an “us vs them” mentality.
Rather than seeing people naturally recoil at a child-molester and a cover-up, many of the Duggars believed that their God’s worst enemy was trying to stop them from spreading their message. How? By making them look bad. By … exposing the truth.
In retrospect, Jill now says of publicly glossing over Josh’s sexual predation, “It’s not something I’m proud of.”
She explained in a sit-down interview: “If I hadn’t felt obligated to like, one, do it for the sake of the show and two, do it for the sake of my parents, I wouldn’t have done it.”
But she did. And, for a time, it worked. TLC was able to pivot to Counting On, which was essentially no different from 19 Kids And Counting.
At first, it didn’t show Jim Bob or Michelle.
Eventually, they were back on the show. Production was really boiling the frog, hoping that viewers wouldn’t react negatively. A lot of people will choose ignorance and peace over right and wrong.
It looked like Jim Bob and Michelle could keep milking TLC for paychecks and promoting their extreme lifestyle. Until Josh’s newer crimes came to light. Then it all finally, finally came crashing down.
Meanwhile, Jim Bob collected the TLC checks. His daughters didn’t — not even the daughters whose names were on the title of the series.
Jill shared that she “never received any payout” for her time on Reality TV.
“No check, no cash, no nothing. For seven and a half years of my adult life, I was never paid,” she described. “We were taken advantage of.”
Jill Duggar Relies Upon Husband’s Support as Family Rages Over Shiny Happy People was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.