L'immagine della felicità:

The documentary fairly hammers the Duggar parents and this abominable ministry movement, but I wish TLC (which has as much to do with "learning" as MTV has to do with "music" in the 21st century) got ripped as much as well. Shame on them for looking the other way with the Duggar parents and eldest son until they couldn't anymore. I get that they aren't the focus of the documentary on the whole, but they are a morally liable entity in this sordid tale.

Meanwhile, those who are saying that this is anti-Christian . . . To think that any of the whistle blowers are "anti-Christian" is laughable. They are anti-cult, anti-predators. If you are equating Christianity to IBLP, I'm worried for you.

I started watching the Duggars when they started on TLC with their series. I was a young mom with two children, and a Christian. I found myself marvelling at how Michelle maintained her level of calm, never raising her voice nor a hand to her brood of children. Homeschooling them. The children being so well behaved, so sweet. It would make me feel substandard as a mom. I would lose my temper with my kids. My kids were not always well behaved. My husband would say, "There's something wrong with this family. Something is not right."

Well that was all before 2015. In 2015 viewers were enlightened that all was not shiny in the Duggar home. Josh had molested five underage girls when he was a young teenager. Then more issues with Josh. He was outed as an Ashley Madison patron. These last few years with the despicable finding of Josh having downloaded some of the worst images of babies and children being SAd, ultimately resulting in his incarceration, viewers see that all is not right in the Duggar home. And yet, Jim Bob continues to protest fiercely. I have never heard Jim Bob or Michelle apologize to their daughters, who were Josh's victims, to his wife Anna, who experienced the ultimate betrayal by his infidelity, nor to the children of his video downloads, who were victimized in the worst way, an unforgivable crime to which I believe his sentence is not long enough.

The docuseries sheds more light on Bill Gothard and IBLP. It's true that the set up is a perfect storm for women to be abused with zero accountability. Actually, for women to feel the burden and the cause of the harm that they endure, all while smiling and minimizing the crime.

IBLP is a cult. People follow blindly. I am glad that they have been exposed. My concern is that the Duggars have made IBLP seem like a wonderful extension of the Gospel, and that more unsuspecting believers have bought the lie and are now involved in it, and subsequently bringing harm to their families. This cult is shrouded in lies and hypocrisy. The first evidence of that is when JimBob is asked to be featured in Parent magazine, and he is not transparent as to the reason why Josh is not at home. He is at an IBLP work camp for molesting his sisters, and Jim Bob simply summons him to return.

What is hidden in darkness eventually comes to light. Unfortunately it came too late. Jim Bob has amassed millions (which he kept for himself, while exploiting children and putting them on tv, which by the way is satanic for the IBLP and verboten in their households), and many many of the vulnerable have been irreparably harmed in the name of religion.

As Jesus said, better to have a millstone hung around your neck than to cause harm to a precious little child.

I've spent a lifetime trying to explain my life in IBLP/ATI and I was extremely nervous about how this docuseries would present it. The sense of relief and validation after watching Shiny Happy People (several times) is indescribable. I'm thrilled to be able to point people towards this now and not have to explain the abuse and horror over and over again. Thank you to each one who told their story. It's incredible to see other people who I've never met tell of such similar experiences. Trying to navigate the world around me after learning only what Bill Gothard wanted was nearly impossible, and this series pointed out so many of the deeply ingrained reasons why.

Like I suppose many people I only had heard of the Duggars, I knew they had lots of kids, I knew they had been on a reality show which I never saw, but I knew nothing about the core belief system that guided them. This docuseries, four parts on Amazon Prime, digs into all that. The main interview contributors are some of the Duggar children, now adults, and friends and relatives who know them well.

Jim Bob and his wife Michelle came to be Fundamental Christians on their own, but then were greatly influenced by the IBLP religion espoused by what many now call a cult leader, Bill Gothard. A basic tenet is the husband is the absolute head of the family and the wife submits to him. Plus children are home-schooled as a way to shield them from the many sins of society.

But a deeper and more sinister goal was for couples to have as many children as they could (19 for the Duggars, with at least one miscarriage) as an ultimate goal to have armies of followers to infiltrate government, and especially the Supreme Court, as a mechanism to converting, over a few generations, the country into a deeply Christian country embracing only fundamental Christian values.

The problem with a strong leader and his cult is that eventually a few, or many, will see the light and the truth and will break away. That is the source of this docuseries, former IBLP devotees who now are eager to expose the truth. Jim Bob and Michelle, as well as Gothard, all declined input into this series but now that it is out issued this statement, "The recent 'documentary' that talks about our family is sad because in it we see the media and those with ill intentions hurting people we love," and calling it "derogatory and sensationalized."

My wife and I found the series fascinating. In some ways it reminded me of a documentary a couple of years ago that revealed sexual abuse of minor girls in some cult-ish Amish communities, covered up and never reported to authorities.

Streaming on Amazom prime in four parts, roughly 3 hours total running time.

I watched the Duggar's show from time to time when its was airing. I always thought they had too many children, mostly because the older ones (particularly the girls) had to parent their siblings and did not have their own needs met. I always thought that Michelle's little baby voice was creepily childlike and submissive, that the children were almost certainly not getting a real education, and that by making sex and the body itself so taboo, they were just going to create problems.

So, when Josh Duggar was found to have molested his sisters and other girls, and then to have moved on to actual child pornography, I was somewhat surprised but not entirely shocked. Like one of the escapees interviews said, monsters are created. They taught him that women should submit to men and children to adults, then built a giant wall around the subject of sex to the point that he grew up with a warped view of it. They also used corporal punishment (I didn't know how bad it was, yikes). I'm not excusing him. The guy belongs in jail. But it is certainly largely his parents' fault that he ended up like this.

I just felt heartsick and angry on behalf of all of the people interviewed who had to live like that for so many years before escaping. Cults like this really do give religion a bad name. I know plenty of people who grew up in large families and/or religious households who were treated with respect and love and grew up to be happy, productive, decent adults. I also know people who were home schooled who got good educations and went on to go to college and be successful. Notably, they were always given social outlets through sports and other activities.

This movement is rotten on every level. And yes, that includes the political wing. Peaking behind that particular dark curtain was pretty disturbing. If a couple wants to have a large family, that's their choice. But it should be a choice, not a method of keeping women barefoot, pregnant and beneath the heels of their spouses and fathers.