Court documents detail how Josh Duggar molestation allegations first came to light

• A federal judge on Wednesday detailed how the allegations that Josh Duggar sexually abused his younger sisters first came to light.
• The judge said the allegations were kept secret for years, until a family friend inadvertently revealed them to their church community.

A federal judge gave a detailed history of Josh Duggar's alleged molestation of his sisters on this week, recounting how Duggar's conduct was largely kept as a family secret until it inadvertently slipped out through the daughter of a family friend years later.

Judge Timothy Brooks, who also oversaw Duggar's child pornography trial last year, described the details in a ruling on Wednesday dismissing a lawsuit from four of Duggar's sisters. The sisters had sued a number of Arkansas officials in 2017, arguing that police improperly released documents from the molestation investigation and violated their privacy.

Though most of the facts contained in Brooks' ruling were already known to the public through media reports and police documents, Brooks' ruling summarized the disturbing, yearslong series of events in gripping detail. Brooks began by explaining that Duggar's four sisters "were sexually abused by their brother, Joshua" between March of 2002 and March of 2003, when he was 14 and 15 years old. The four sisters were between the ages of 5 and 11 when the alleged abuse occurred, Brooks said.

"Their parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, discovered the abuse but did not report it to the police or any state agency," Brooks wrote. "Instead, they decided to keep it a secret and discipline Joshua privately. Unfortunately, whatever Mr. and Mrs. Duggar tried to do to stop Joshua's behavior did not work."

The Duggar parents sought help from their family friends, Jim and Bobye Holt, who were leaders within the Duggars' church community, Brooks continued. Both Jim and Bobye Holt testified during Duggar's child pornography trial in December, aiding the prosecution's efforts to portray Duggar as a habitual child predator. Bobye Holt told the court that Duggar confessed to her on multiple occasions about touching his sisters over and under their clothes.

Brooks said the Holts' daughter heard details of Duggar's alleged conduct from her parents, and wrote down those details in a letter to her favorite author. But the Holts' daughter never mailed the letter — instead, she placed it in a book on her bookshelf, and didn't move it until 2006 when she loaned the book to a "friend and fellow church member," according to Brooks.

InTouch Weekly first reported the letter in the book in 2016, after obtaining a police report. But the report said Duggars' parents refused to tell police at the time who wrote the letter and who received it.

"From that point on, the Duggars' family secret spread by word of mouth to the other members of their close-knit church community," Brooks wrote. "It is unknown exactly how many church members learned of the abuse, but the news caused factions to form within the church, and certain church members evidently disagreed with how the matter was being handled."

Anonymous tipsters alerted Arkansas officials and Oprah Winfrey's production company

Ultimately the news reached the Arkansas Department of Human Services hotline in December of 2006. The hotline received two tips: one from an anonymous caller, and a second from a producer at Harpo Studios, Oprah Winfrey's production company.

The Duggar family had been set to appear on Winfrey's show, but an anonymous tipster emailed Harpo Studios warning that the family was "not what they seem[ed] to be," Brooks' ruling said. The same day Harpo Studios reached out to the Arkansas Department of Human Services, the Springdale Police Department opened an investigation.

Duggar, who was convicted in December of child-pornography possession, was never criminally charged over his alleged conduct with his sisters. Brooks also noted in his ruling that the Duggar sisters were also never removed from the family home.

The allegations against Duggar didn't go fully public until 2015, when InTouch Weekly reported on the 2006 police investigation.

The Duggar family has since acknowledged the allegations publicly; parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar told Fox News in 2015 that their son had inappropriately touched their daughters, and two of Duggar's sisters also spoke out about the scandal, saying they had forgiven their brother and felt revictimized by the media's handling of the story.

Josh Duggar himself issued a public apology, saying he had confessed about his actions to police, received counseling, and acknowledged that he "acted inexcusably for which I am extremely sorry and deeply regret."

In Brooks' ruling dismissing the Duggar sisters' lawsuit, he sympathized with Duggar's four sisters and agreed that Arkansas officials had mishandled the investigative documents. But he said the sisters hadn't proven that the officials had intentionally violated the law.

A lawyer representing the Duggar sisters did not respond to Insider's request for comment.