I'm finally done with the Amy King podcast episode and will work on an official recap, but here are my main takeaways:
- Amy is very much Amy-ing in this interview lol, there are more than a few things she said that made me go 😬 but overall definitely still worth listening to for the things she shared
- big emphasis on the narcissist tendencies of both Amy's dad and Grandpa Duggar (Jim Bob's dad), the latter of which I think is especially important when it comes to understanding the Radicalization of Jim Bob. Pretty sure JB touched on it in the Duggar memoirs too, I remember him mentioning his dad being careless with money and not very easy to please. Per Amy's recounting, it sounds like he was also emotionally and physically abusive, and while that doesn't justify JB's later actions against his own kids, I think it makes a lot of sense why he clung to a high control, very black and white religion. Amy's mom had the opposite (but very common) response to the abuse, which was dating/marrying men who were similarly abusive, unfortunately.
- Another thing she emphasized that just makes a lot of the Duggars' behavior make sense is how any negative emotion expressed by the kids just simply wasn't tolerated. It gave their family this kind of shiny facade that everyone was attracted to, but the reality is that the kids were upbeat all the time because that's all they were allowed to be. I know that's not super revolutionary information bc most people could probably guess that in hindsight, but I think Amy's confirmation that they'd be punished for expressing annoyance or "whining" or just being upset is worth noting.
- (Josh discussion incoming) Amy mentions 2 interesting things about the time where Josh was sent away by his parents after his first "incidents", when he was a teenager:
1. Before they decided how to punish him, he apparently broke down and begged his parents for help with his "issue"* and
2. When Josh was sent away, and Amy or others asked where he was, JB and Michelle's response would always be something about Josh helping with some kind of natural disaster relief. She said it got to the point where'd she'd be looking through the news for updates and not see anything, and when she mentioned it to JB and Michelle they'd just shrug it off or come up with another excuse, and she would really find it weird but she just trusted them implicitly. People in the comments of the video claiming to be ex-fundie, especially IBLP or IBP, said that was a very common excuse in these kinds of situations (when usually the boys were sent elsewhere), so it really makes me side eye Medic Corps.............I wonder if that was created specifically for boys/men who had done either similar things or had pissed their families off in some other way. You can only get sent to ALERT so many times before you age out, but not Medic Corps 👀
*if this is true and JB and Michelle STILL chose to send Josh to basically work camps disguised as Christian reform programs, instead of a therapeutic trauma and abuse program for kids, JB and Michelle should've been charged with child neglect in my opinion. Josh's crimes were obviously disgusting, but he was still a minor at the time, and minors often express these behaviors when they were abused themselves, so not getting a child psychiatric, trauma-informed care after something like this is neglect at the very best.
