Jill Duggar to Tell ‘Duggar Family Secrets’ in New Docuseries

Jill Duggar Dillard is the only member of her family to appear in the trailer for Prime Video’s new documentary series, Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets. The four-episode series features interviews with Jill and others who have escaped the Institute in Basic Life Principles, the controversial organization to which Jim Bob Duggar and Michelle Duggar belong. The series debuts on June 2 and was directed by Julia Willoughby Nason and Olivia Crist.

Jill, 31, only briefly appears in the teaser, but promises to share her own story. “There’s a story that’s got to be told and I would rather be the one telling it,” she said. Another former IBLP member told the filmmakers the group’s teachers are not Christianity, but “something entirely different.” Another told the cameras that the group’s founder, Bill Gothard, “turned every father into a cult leader and every home into an island.”

The trailer’s release comes a few months after Jill’s sister, Jinger Duggar Vuolo, released the book Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear. Jinger did not intend for her book to be a “tell-all” slamming her family, and wrote that she had a “wonderful childhood.” Instead, her book was about herself and her spiritual journey. “It is the story of my faith and how I’ve had to figure out what I believe and why I believe it. This is my personal theological memoir,” she wrote, notes Entertainment Tonight.

However, she admitted in one chapter that she thought about whether the teachings of the IBLP were right or wrong. “When you grow up in a tight-knit community where everyone believes the same things about everything-not just who God is, but also how men and women are supposed to dress and speak-it’s hard to even consider the possibility that what you were taught was wrong,” she wrote. She noted that the teachings brought “exhaustion and fear in my life.”

Gothard founded what became the IBLP in 1961. His conservative teachings include Bible memorization, having large families, female subservience, aversion to debt, and conservative dress. The IBLP became nationally known through the Duggars, who starred in TLC’s 19 Kids & Counting and Counting On. Both shows were canceled for controversies related to Jill’s oldest brother Josh Duggar. Josh is now serving a 12-year prison sentence on charges of receiving and possessing child pornography.

Gothard stepped down from the IBLP in 2014 after 34 women accused him of sexual harassment and molestation. Some of the alleged crimes took place when the victims were minors. Some of the alleged victims sued Gothard in 2016, but the lawsuit was dismissed two years later because the statute of limitations expired.

Jill and her husband, Derick Dillard, have been vocal about their differences with her family. In 2017 court documents unsealed last year, Jill wrote about seeing a “whole new side” to her father when Derick began making decisions for their own family. “Sadly, I realized he had become pretty controlling, fearful, and reactionary. He was verbally abusive. Our relationship is not good. It got pretty toxic,” Jill wrote about her relationship with Jim Bob in 2017. The Dillards also claimed they needed permission to visit the Duggar home and Jim Bob did not approve of her decisions to get a nose ring, drink alcohol, or wear pants.