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After a new shocking family scandal, anyone might need some time to prepare a statement.
But Jana waited until her latest disgraced brother was already extradited to Florida before she spoke up.
Addressing Joseph’s charges, she chose her words carefully.
She also admitted to being blindsided. Like some of her siblings, she learned about his arrest from the news.
A couple of weeks later, she’s ready to make a statement
On Thursday, April 2, Jana took to her Instagram Story to publicly respond to Joseph’s arrest.
“We are deeply saddened and heartbroken by the situation involving my brother, Joseph,”
“This news came as a shock to us, as we had no prior knowledge before it became public,”
To be clear, it doesn’t sound like she’s just assuring people that she didn’t know that her brother allegedly preyed upon a 9-year-old girl.
It sounds like she’s also sharing that she had no head’s up from anyone. She saw Joseph’s arrest on the news, just like the rest of us did.
“Our hearts are with the child who has been harmed,” Jana then expressed.
She affirmed that “this is a grievous and unacceptable wrong.”
Keeping things vague, Jana concluded: “We continued to pray for the victim and for justice to be carried out.”
As you may have noticed, she’s not only glossing over the horrid details of Joseph’s charges. It’s more than that.
She’s using a tremendous amount of passive voice. It’s the sort of verbal wrangling that you usually only see in newspaper headlines after a police shooting. You know, the ones where a “man dies from bullet wounds” as if that happened spontaneously.
What is Joseph accused of, again?
On March 18, Joseph Duggar was arrested after allegedly confessing (twice) to molesting a 9-year-old girl during a 2020 family vacation to Panama City Beach in Florida.
The victim, now 14, remains unidentified. Court filings refer to her as Jane Doe.
We know only that she is not one of the Duggar grandchildren and that she and her family apparently vacationed with Joseph and Kendra (during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, no less) in 2020.
Having had years to process what happened to her, she told her father. Her father confronted Joseph over the phone.
And Joseph reportedly confessed — first to the man and then to police following a second phone call.
From the earliest days of our reporting, we at THG advised caution when it came to Joseph’s apparent repentance.
Spending days behind bars can make someone wildly reconsider a previous plan to make good.
After his extradition to Florida, Joseph pleaded not guilty to the charges.
It is possible that this is simply a tactic to make prosecutors offer him a deal. Many men who prey upon small children want some sort of protection in prison, such as a minimum security facility with more comforts and lower odds of getting murdered.
However, we cannot discount the possibility that Joseph now plans to retract his confessions and claim to be innocent. This would likely force the 14-year-old girl to testify in court.
We do not know what Joseph Duggar has planned.
It seems pretty unlikely that Jana does, either.
Right now, even Joseph’s wife seems to be keeping her distance from him, emphasizing that he’s not her priority as she tries to regain custody of their children.
It sounds like Kendra may have been advised that she could have to throw him under the bus in court.
Only time will tell what Joseph will do. His brother, Josh, has never admitted his guilt — at least, not about his crimes as an adult.
