Josh Duggar will be released from jail as he awaits trial in his felony child pornography case.
The scandal-plagued former 19 Kids and Counting star, 33, faced Judge Christy Comstock in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas on Wednesday for a detention hearing. The father of six — appearing from the Washington County Detention Center and wearing his gray-striped jail-issued jumpsuit — was arrested on April 29 on charges of receiving and possessing material depicting the sexual abuse of children and faces up to 20 years in prison for each. He has pleaded not guilty.
While the judge granted Duggar's release, effective Thursday, she said, "I'm just going to remind you how serious these charges are." She noted the evidence against him that was presented was "significant." She said the nature of the crime "concerns the court." She said his past conduct — molesting five young girls, including some of his sisters, when he was a minor teen in 2002 and 2003 —was also of concern.
Comstock also made the point that the ages of some of the children in the pornography are"close to the ages of your children" — he shares six children, ages 11 and under, with pregnant wife Anna — as well as his younger siblings.However, while she said it was a "very close call" when it came to her decision, she was letting him out with many conditions.
Per those conditions, Josh will be in home confinement, but not at his own home, nor a guest house on the property of his parents, Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar. Instead, he'll be staying with friends of his parents — a pastor and his wife. There will be electric monitoring. He's restricted to the residence at all times — except work, church, doctor's appointments, meetings with his lawyer and court appearances. And he must not possess or view pornography of any kind. He is not to use any internet capable device.
The judge did decide he can have "unlimited" visitation with his children — as long as Anna is present at the time. Josh, who lives in Springdale, Ark., is not to see any other minor children, including siblings and nieces and nephews.
As of now, his jury trial is scheduled to begin July 6 with a pre-trial conference on July 1.
Many new details about Josh's arrest emerged during the hearing. Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Gerald Faulkner, who raided Josh's used car lot where the computer was uncovered in November 2019, spoke about the dozens of images depicting nude minors and child sex abuse materials that were found on a hidden hard drive of Josh's work desktop after a forensic investigation.
Faulkner said two files initially triggered the investigation, which was first flagged by a Little Rock, Ark. police investigator in May 2019 and escalated to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). One was a two-plus minute video of two nude, prepubescent girls engaged in sexual activity who were then sexually assaulted by an adult male. The second was a zip file of 65 images of a prepubescent female, between of age 7 and 9, nude and showing her private parts.
Faulkner wouldn't even read the names of the downloaded files, which were graphic and disturbing. He spoke about one series of videos discovered on the computer and said they are known as being “in the top five of the worst of the worst that I’ve ever had to examine.”
Prosecutors claim the illegal images show child pornography involving minors ranging from the age of 12 to as young as toddlers of 18 months.