- Former "19 Kids and Counting" star
Josh Duggar is awaiting trial on child pornography charges. - Prosecutors and Duggar's defense are battling over whether to raise Duggar's previous molestation scandal at trial.
Prosecutors want to bring up Josh Duggar's previous molestation scandal as they prepare to take him to trial on child pornography charges, but Duggar's legal team is fighting to suppress that information.
Duggar, once a star of his family's now-cancelled TLC reality show, "19 Kids and Counting," was arrested in April on charges of receiving and possessing child pornography. Duggar has pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors in the Western District of Arkansas wrote in a Wednesday court filing that they anticipate Duggar's defense will try to argue that the child pornography found on two of Duggar's computers, one at his used car dealership business and one at his home office, were accessed by someone else and that he "is not interested in such material."
To counter that defense, prosecutors said in the filing that they may now seek to introduce evidence that Duggar "committed other acts of child molestation" in approximately 2002 and 2003. Specifically, they said that he was "investigated for, admitted to, and received counseling for touching and sexually molesting multiple minor females."
Prosecutors pointed out that the child pornography found on Duggar's computer also depicts girls in the same "approximate age range."
While prosecutors didn't specify who the "minor females" are, they appear to be referencing Duggar's reported molestation of four of his sisters. The scandal first broke in 2015, when InTouch published a 2006 police report detailing allegations that Duggar molested the sisters while they slept, and at times while they were awake.
A lawyer for Duggar didn't immediately respond Wednesday to Insider's request for comment, but his legal team addressed the scandal in a filing of their own.
Duggar's lawyers asked a judge not to allow the police report to be admitted because Duggar was never charged with a crime, the allegations are "irrelevant" to the charges in the case, and they could prejudice the jury.
"If the jury were to hear about the allegations lodged against Duggar when he was a minor, an unacceptable risk exists that the jury would convict him in this case, not because the Government has proven him guilty of the crimes charged beyond a reasonable doubt, but because the jury would improperly conclude that the prior allegations against Duggar somehow make it more likely that he committed the charged offenses in this case," Duggar's lawyers said in the filing.
They said such information would "confuse and mislead" the jury and "would needlessly waste time."
Duggar's father, Jim Bob, and members of their church had decided to take Duggar to a police officer to make the report, after Jim Bob learned about his son's behavior and temporarily sent him to live away from the family. Duggar would have been 14 or 15 years old when the allegations detailed in the police report happened.
After InTouch published the police report, Duggar issued a statement appearing to confirm the details.
In the statement, Duggar said that when he was a teen, he "acted inexcusably" and spoke to authorities to confess "my wrongdoing." He claimed to have turned his life around, however, after receiving counseling and seeking forgiveness from "those I had wronged."
TLC cancelled the Duggar family's reality show following the scandal.