Jill Duggar Dillard says everything that happened with her oldest brother Josh Duggar is “still really upsetting” as she advocates for victims like herself and her sisters. Ahead of the release of her memoir Counting the Cost on Sept. 12, the former 19 Kids and Counting star opened up to PEOPLE about the pain she felt when a judge dismissed her and her sister’s invasion of privacy lawsuit in 2022.
Jill and her sisters had filed the suit against the people they claim released a 2003 police report publicly that detailed how Josh had molested them when they were kids. The TLC alum said they believed they were being protected as minors when they gave their initial statements about their brother, making the report’s release disturbing. “They were told as kids, ‘This is a safe place. What you say is safe.’ And it wasn’t true,” said Jill’s husband Derick Dillard, who works as an assistant district attorney in Oklahoma.
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The trial for the invasion of privacy lawsuit was postponed in December 2021 when Josh was charged with one count of possession and one count of receiving child pornography and dismissed in February 2022, just three months before Josh was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison in May 2022. Josh’s sentencing was the “nail in the coffin” for Jill and her sisters’ lawsuit, she said, as it was the same judge handling both cases.ย
“But there’s no reason it shouldn’t have gone to a jury trial. It was just one of those moments [with Josh] that was yet again disappointing,” she explained, adding, “People are quick to say, ‘Oh, anger is bad,’ but I’m like, ‘No, anger can be a good thing.’ Especially when it propels you to advocate for people finding their voice.”ย
Despite being “failed” as victims by the system and through people who “used and abused their positions and were not held accountable,” Jill said she plans to “fight for victims’ rights through Derick’s line of work.” Derick added, “I work with victims now every day and try and make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to them. We want to try and protect them, and actually try and make sure that we can follow up and be genuine when we say, ‘This is a safe place.’”
