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“When you're raised from birth inside a system that teaches obedience and godliness and independence is witchcraft, you don't experience the cage as a cage, you experience it as protection. The children who left have described in varying degrees of detail a system of shame and financial dependency that didn't end when they turned 18, didn't end when they married, and didn't end until they physically removed themselves from the compound.”

“Jill’s husband Derick Dillard has publicly alleged that Jim Bob negotiated their television contracts, controlled the payments, and collected money earned by his adult married children without their knowledge or meaningful consent. Jill spent years in therapy after leaving, eventually writing a memoir where she called the environment she grew up in cult-like, describing a life where every element of that image was managed, approved and financially controlled, allegedly by Jim Bob.”

“Michelle Duggar's soft, littling voice, the one that became a kind of cultural punchline, the perpetual sweetness of it, the almost childlike register, isn’t a quirk. Former IBLP members have described it specifically as a trained presentation, the yielding affect of a woman who has fully internalized the doctrine of submission, and statistically speaking, you will find this to be a pattern and a trend in someone who has suffered childhood abuse.”

“TLC aired the show until May of 2015 when the story broke about Josh's ways with kids, but then they greenlit Counting On, a spinoff featuring the rest of the Duggar children, because why not profit from other people's suffering? They didn't leave, they just restructured, and the network released a statement calling the situation heartbreaking before renewing the franchise and counting all the way to the bank.”

“Counting on ran for 11 seasons and ended in June of 2021, not because anything changed about the network's relationship with the family, but because Josh Duggar was arrested on federal child charges and the situation became impossible to broadcast around again. Another cancellation, another statement about how saddened and troubled the network was, while they maintained one continuous revenue stream in between the scandals.”