Lawsuit reveals teen was groomed as personal sex slave in the Duggar family’s movement

[warrior1]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/15/lawsuit-reveals-teen-was-groomed-as-personal-sex-slave-in-the-duggar-familys-movement/

A leading advocate of the patriarchal Quiverfull movement groomed a teenage girl as his “personal sex object” and then used the purity culture to shame her into silence, according to a lawsuit filed by his victim.

Douglas Phillips resigned last year from Vision Forum and Vision Forum Ministries over what he described at the time as an extramarital affair.

But the lawsuit, reported by Right Wing Watch, revealed more details about this relationship and the ways that women are treated in the Quiverfull movement – which has been popularized by the prolific Duggar family and their TLC reality show, 19 Kids and Counting.

Attorneys claim Phillips, a close friend to the Duggar family and an associate of actor Kirk Cameron, “methodically groomed” Lourdes Torres since she was 15 years old and led her to believe they would be married.

snip

Oh my!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Somehow, this does not surprise me.

Any movement that enslaves women is bound to become something even worse........and here's proof.

I hope he gets taken to the cleaners.

[demigoddess]

2. same here

Dugger seems equally creepy about his daughters.

[Boomerproud]

3. Crickets from the Religious Right regarding this little tidbit.

I'm sure they'd say he was just a bad apple.

[nomorenomore08]

13. I suppose in a way these guys are to the far right what the Black Bloc are to the far left -

i.e. the most hard-core of the hard-core. I'm not equating the two otherwise.

[JI7]

4. another one, Victim asks Duggars to stop supporting ministry where founder

has been accused to sexual harassing many women .

there has been some talk about how one of the duggar girls may have been a victim. during an interview with the girls when asked about this guy , jim bob jumps in to prevent them from answering. (the girls being interviewed are all in their 20s&quot

http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2014/04/open-letter-duggar-family-stop-supporting-ministry-bill-gothard-alleged-sexual-harassment/

[XemaSab]

5. It's not the Duggar family's movement

Similar, but not the same.

[quakerboy]

9. I was curious, so I googled

From the Duggars website: "The Duggars are not directly involved in Vision Forum Ministries, although they have been guest speakers at several conferences sponsored by Vision Forum over the years."

From another website, christianpost:
"Jimbob and Michelle Duggar, whose family stars in the TLC show "19 and Counting," have had a close relationship with Vision Forum's founding couple, Phillips and his wife Beall, and over the years they have appeared in the organization's materials and have spoken at its conferences.

The Vision Forum Inc. website sells DVDs with titles such as "Tea with Michelle Duggar," "Hospitality with Michelle Duggar," and "Large Family Logistics: The Art and Science of Managing the Large Family," a book in which Michelle Duggar wrote the forward."

So it sounds like its the same movement, just different sub groups. Kinda like how every one at my grade school was a bobcat, but Some of us were in Mrs Smiths class, and others were in Mr Johnsons class.

[XemaSab]

11. I guess it depends on definitions

It's a little more like the Catholics and the Protestants are all Christians, but some follow the Pope and some don't. The Duggars follow Bill Gothard, and the VF'ers don't, but they still do a lot of the same things.

[nomorenomore08]

14. It does say Phillips is a close family friend of the Duggars. Which is not to hold them culpable

but it does make their "movement" seem even scarier than it did already.

[LeftyMom]

18. There are some theological and social differences, though admittedly it's a hard distinction to see

unless you're really familiar with the group. The Duggars are ATI, which is not a reformed group. Most of the families do home church, but theologically they're basically Independent Fundamental Baptists. They're generally KJV-only people though I don't recall if it's a membership requirement. ATI families tend to be really rural, kinda on the poor side, the quality of the homeschooling materials is very poor. It's the older group, and used to be much larger. ATI runs some group homes that take in troubled teenagers with state funding, these are widely reported to be abusive. They also teach that adoption is dangerous because it brings the intergenerational curses of the adopted child's family into your home.

Vision Forum was, and some related groups with overlapping membership (notably the NCFIC) still are reformed. Theologically they're a mix of reformed Baptists and reformed Presbyterians. They're really big on small, theologically strict local churches and church discipline. While many of the individual families involved (the Torres family was always the obvious example) are poor, the leadership tend to portray themselves as some kind of landed gentry and the rest tend to fake it. There's a real class divide compared to ATI. They like to portray themselves as more theologically sophisticated and intellectual. Their politics are more anti-government, they'd dismiss ATI running a school for kids in state custody as supplanting parental authority and as statism. (They think everything is statisim. They tend to be Paulites or Constitution Party voters.) They're much more in favor of adoption than the ATI folks. They tend to be slightly less strict in terms of monitoring and chaperoning the older kids than ATI families, but both groups would seem extremely intrusive to outside groups.

So even though there's some cultural overlap in terms of being quiverfull and some families have drifted from ATI to VF and similar reformed groups, or have remained ATI while using some VF materials, there are some big differences and it's really not the same thing.

Sorry if that's a bit confusing, but I really wanted to straighten out the confusion. A lot of the reporting on fundamentalist groups doesn't get the distinctions straight and the fundies use that to dismiss any criticism as being ill-informed.

[XemaSab]

19. As if you know anything about this

[kcr]

17. It is effectively the same movement

They share the same goal and they work together to achieve it.

[LeftyMom]

6. Why link to Raw Clickbait instead of directly to the filing or to Right Wing Watch?

Hell, even Wonkette did a better treatment of the situation.

[marble falls]

7. Nice guy. And there's something not right with Kirk Cameron.

[XemaSab]

12. yup

[nomorenomore08]

15. Like a strange sort of addiction - some are dependent but still mostly functional and "normal"

whereas others just seem to have their brains eaten by it. Cameron is a good example of the latter.

[Iggo]

8. Ew!

Ew! Ew! Ew! Ew!

[nomorenomore08]

16. I know exactly how you feel. Think I'm gonna be sick.

[one_voice]

10. The movement is a fucking..

child molesting, women oppressing cult. All in the name of religion.