A recent documentary called "Behind the Glory of a Happy Family: The Secrets of the Dag Family" has caused a lot of discussion on the Internet.
The story revolves around the Duggar family, which picks up the dark history of this huge family little by little.
Many friends know that there are very diverse types of reality TV shows in the United States, including "The Kardashians" and "Beverly Lady" to show off their wealth drama, as well as various survival challenge shows and so on.
And many American audiences regard the Dag family as the "Kardashian family" in the Christian world, and from 2008 to the present, they have chased his family's reality show "More than 19 Babies..." for 15 years.
The family's most notable is their extremely devout and even extreme beliefs and lifestyles.
As parents, Jim and Michelle, on the grounds of "God's gift to have a baby", did not use any contraception, and in the 39 years of marriage, they have given birth to a total of 19 children (and two more have miscarried), and live in Tontitown, Arkansa, USA.
Over the years, "More than 19 Babies...", recording the daily life of this huge family.
The whole family is an atmosphere of "parents respecting each other, children being friendly and obedient, and the community is warm and helping each other", living a standard life like a religious fairy tale.
Mother Michelle has been communicating with everyone softly and softly on the show, father Jim actively brings up the baby, especially will discipline his sons, take them to do farm work, and the daughters also actively share the family work, strictly in accordance with the family's duty schedule to do housework.
The first phase of the show, a total of 10 seasons, 229 episodes, almost no scenes of loud quarrels between family members, warm as the world of Christ utopia.
However, in May 2015, shortly after the tenth season was released, "Weekly Contact" magazine revealed the shocking news: Josh, the eldest son of the Dag family, sexually assaulted 5 underage girls, four of whom were his own sisters!
"More than 19 Babies..." was cut by TLC in July 2015.
But the dark history of the Dag family has only just opened the first page.
(Photo with President Clinton on the show)
Let's briefly talk about the ins and outs of the birth of "More than 19 Babies...".
In 1984, Jim, 19, and Michelle, 18, got married after graduating from high school.
Both were Arkansas, poor families, and often went to the same church for spiritual comfort, so they met and married.
During her marriage, Michelle had been on oral contraceptives, and planned to have only two or three children.
However, Michelle's first miscarriage was suspected by doctors to be related to her failure to stop the drug in time when she was trying to conceive.
At this point, the couple decided to stop contraception and "accept God's arrangement."
In fact, this decision was related to the Fundamental Doctrine Seminar IBLP, a Christian organization that Jim joined.
In the 60s, when hippie culture was in American society, social unrest, drugs and sex were rampant, many young people were quite confused and did not know what to choose in the future.
The "Basic Doctrine Seminar" was born to lead people to find direction in life.
The religious organization was founded in 1961 by Bill Gothard, Ph.D. in biblical studies, who prides himself as God's messenger and masters the truth, setting a set of rules for family life that Christians are required to abide by.
P.S. Bill remained unmarried and childless and was excommunicated in 2014 for 34 scandals against women.
In addition to not allowing abortion, Bill repeatedly mentioned the following diagram "umbrella authority" law in his sermon.
According to him: Jesus > priest> husband> wife > children.
Bill himself obeyed God, while the husband in the family obeyed him, and his wife and children obeyed him.
It should also be mentioned here that this organization acquiesced in corporal punishment and beating of children on the grounds that they could be reprimanded to be "good children".
In addition, daughters in love must go through the process of "father permission - accompany dating - give marriage permission", and marriage matters are all controlled by the father.
Keeping chastity before marriage is such a thing, let alone it.
Sex is a taboo topic for daughters and sons.
(Source: Amazon Prime)
For Jim and Michelle, two young people who graduated from high school and are less than 20 years old, joining this organization is to find a direction in life.
And the organization compiled various teaching materials, refuting the theory of evolution, modern science education, etc., asking believers to buy his teaching materials, so that children can receive family education and not go to school, so that "they can get closer to God."
In such an organizational structure, from the founder to Jim in the small family, men hold absolute authority.
And Michelle, who was only 18 years old when she got married, was also convinced of this.
She even wrote about marriage advice:
"If your husband wants to have sex with you, accept it no matter how tired you are or how tired you are.
Because there is no second woman in the world who can do this with him, it is God's plan. ”
Seeing this, everyone understands, why Michelle has been pregnant so many times and given birth to 19 babies, two of which are twins.
After giving birth to her eldest son in 1988, Michelle gave birth every 15 months until she was 43 in 2009.
During her last pregnancy, she almost died of pre-epilepsy and had a miscarriage at an advanced age, but it still did not prevent her from living.
Michelle was born at home, and Jim's influence in the church organization was growing, and he was already at the level of direct contact with founder Bill Gothard.
He also took his wife and children to give lectures at churches, explaining the benefits of this lifestyle, how to raise good children, and so on.
(Left eldest son Josh)
From 1999 to 2002, Jim also went on to become a member of the Arkansas Sixth District to introduce the IBLP to a wider audience.
After playing politics, he took the real estate agency license, earned a lot of money, and forced himself to support a large family and live without debt.
He took his wife and children to make magazines and appeared in several channels of documentaries.
The TV station not only helped the Dag family expand the house to 650 square meters, but also attracted many sponsors.
In 2008, they signed a reality TV contract for "More Than XX Babies..." and have since embarked on the road to prosperity.
(Early seasons of the show)
According to relevant reports, the Dag family can earn millions of dollars from a single season of reality shows, not to mention the cost of major sponsors and advertisers to endorse them alone.
And the vast target audience of 210 million Christian people in the United States makes TV stations completely free of ratings.
Devout Christian parents, 19 meek and well-behaved children, are simply the standard model of the American conservative Christian family.
The cash flow that rolled in made Jim Le blossom.
He soon set up his own PR firm, which was responsible for the business of his wife and children, and handled all kinds of contracts and work negotiations.
In the Dag family, Jim Dag is the absolute power that no one can shake.
From the start of the show in 2008 to the end of the tenth season in 2015, the pictures produced by mother Michelle many times, and the pictures of sons and daughters falling in love and getting married, each time can attract millions of viewers.
But the Dag family's fairytale bubble burst in May 2015.
In 2006, when the Dag family was about to appear on the "Oprah Interview Show", the program team received an anonymous email from a person claiming to be a 61-year-old female relative of the Dag family.
She warned that Josh, the eldest son of the Dag family, molested women.
The program faxed the email to the Human Rights Helpline, and the Arkansas Police Department opened an investigation.
Josh was 18 at the time and was summoned by police.
Jim, the father, immediately brought him a lawyer and admitted during questioning that his son had indeed "touched" his sisters' breasts and private areas in 2002 and 2003, when he was 14 to 15 years old.
But he explained that when he and his wife, Michelle, found out about the incident, they sent their son to a Christian correction program for three months.
It wasn't until May 2015 that Weekly Contact dug up police documents from 2006 and finally made Josh's molestation of his sisters public, piecing together the real facts.
It turned out that after being found molesting his sisters many times in 2002 and 2003, Jim and Michelle immediately sent him away from the "land of right and wrong" in order to save their eldest son, arranged for their son to work at a construction site of an acquaintance, avoiding the wind, and did not "let his son accept the Christian correction project" at all.
Before returning home in July 2003, Jim took a local sheriff acquaintance and gave Josh a "serious admonition" to promise not to make another mistake.
Ironically, in 2015, the media picked up that the sheriff, who should have done something about Josh's molestation of his sister, was actually sentenced to 56 years in prison for engaging in child pornography.
(Left acquaintance, right Josh)
In July 2015, the station announced that it would permanently suspend the broadcast of "More than 19 Babies...".
However, because Josh's molestation of a young girl has been going on for more than ten years, the case has passed the prosecution period, and the matter has finally been settled, and he escaped punishment.
At this time, he had married his wife Anna, who belonged to the same church in 2008, and had a baby.
The wife also came forward to say that she knew Josh's black history before marriage, but believed that he had been reformed by pursuing God, and the family would continue to live well.
The show was suspended, costing the Dag family tens of millions of dollars.
Jim and Michelle were quite anxious, and Jim quickly thought of a new way: I can't make a show anymore, but there are still daughters!
He privately used the reason of "thinking about the overall situation of the whole family" to let the two daughters who were molested by their brother when they were children, Jill, born in 1991, and Jessa, born in 1992, be interviewed by well-known hosts, asking them to say on the show that the harm caused by their brother has passed, they have let go, and they can live well.
Jill said in the 2023 documentary that she was completely forced by her father that year, and in fact she still had severe psychological trauma, but she had no right to speak at that time and had no choice.
After accepting an exclusive interview in 2015 and downplaying his brother's lewdness, from December 2015 to July 2020, the two sisters, Jill and Jessa, shouldered the difficult task of making money from the Dag family's second phase of the reality show "More than So Many Babies...".
But even more speechless is the fact that in this year's documentary, Rig Jil revealed that in so many years, since the filming of reality shows began in 2008, the father has never distributed his income to his adult children.
Even when she became an adult, her parents signed various contracts for her without authorization.
It wasn't until she resumed filming in 2015, when she got married and pregnant in the show and decided not to produce footage publicly, that the program team called and threatened her for a breach of contract, and Jill and her husband found out that they had been tricked by their parents into signing a 5-year comprehensive filming contract.
She argued with her husband and parents, but his father was willing to pay only a minimum wage of $10 an hour.
On the other hand, Josh, who was out because he molested his sisters, lived well with the help of his parents, and even inherited his father's business, entered the Arkansas government to engage in politics, and became a church representative.
It was not until November 2019 that the fate of the daughters of the Dag family finally took a turn.
(Josh and wife and children)
In late 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a series of investigative actions aimed at child protection and investigating child sexual exploitation.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security searched the dealership where Josh had bought a car and found images of suspected child pornography.
Because of the epidemic barrier, it was not until April 2021 that the US Mounted Police, who had relevant evidence, arrested Josh and opened the trial process.
Prosecutors said Josh began abusing his sisters at the age of 12 and intensified his adult life, downloading and distributing child pornography, which is a great threat not only to society but also to the seven children born to him and his wife.
After Josh's arrest, the Dag family's second phase reality show was finally canceled, and the daughters were finally free.
In May 2022, Josh was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and will continue 20 years of residential surveillance after his release, not being allowed to contact the seven children until they reach adulthood, and the children will also need to be supervised by a court-appointed third person to meet them when they become adults.
Josh's arrest and sentencing, Jim and Michelle's exploitation of young children, especially the daughters of the victims, in order to save their son, was exposed one by one, and now the daughter came forward to expose their documentary broadcast, which caused strong condemnation from the public.
"Thankfully, Jill bravely exposed this 'demonic religion'. Her dad, Jim, should also be in jail with his son. ”
"The cult destroyed the family.
And who could have predicted that maybe Josh would have been a normal child, but the broken rules in the cult made him a vicious, dark and ugly person in this modern society.
Sex is normal, and suppressing it will never end well. Now he has become a disgusting pervert who will rot in prison. ”
"We need people like Jill and other brave voices in the documentary to protect potential victims."
I have the highest respect for them because it's so hard to speak up. Their parents are terrible! Which parent would allow 'predators' to touch their children? Disgusting! ”
(Jim's sister, nieces and wives, Jill Dugg)
Some netizens also mentioned the situation of Anna, who has not yet divorced Josh:
"What's bad for Anna is that she was born and raised in this brainwashing religion, with no real education and no work experience.
She has 7 children and can't survive on her own financially.
I believe that if she divorced, my father-in-law Jim would definitely take the children.
The only way she can survive is to divorce Josh and write an autobiography that reveals everything from her own perspective, and everyone will definitely pay for it.
She can then use the money to survive, heal herself and move on. ”
"I feel sorry for Anna and her children, pray for her!"
Some netizens said:
"Sadly, those who really need help may not watch this documentary at all."
Today, Jim and Michelle are still running the Dag family's social media and official website, with a lot of fans and likes, and a large audience.
The overall style is still a utopian image of devout Christians and a good life.
The daughters who got rid of their parents' exploitation have fought compensation lawsuits with their parents, and have a compensation settlement out of court, the specific amount is unknown.
Through podcasts, social media, and publishing autobiographies, they took back control of their lives.
They also voiced to their sister-in-law Anna, expressing their willingness to do their best to help her.
But at present, Anna has not replied, and everything is lost.
Source: British newspaper sister
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