Inside the Christian Cult That Told the Duggars to Blame Their Daughters for Their Abuse
For most of America, InTouch Weekly’s revelation that reality star Josh Duggar is a serial child molester came as a sickening shock. But to some self-described survivors of the “Quiverfull” movement of evangelical Christianity to which the Duggar family belongs, the family’s story of secrecy, victim-blaming and denial is all too familiar.
Former members of the insular religious movement, which promotes procreation by forswearing all forms of birth control and conscripting women into a life of perpetual pregnancy, describe a cult-like movement obsessed with public appearance and deeply at odds with its dogmatic beliefs on sex.
“[The abuse] is not at all an aberration to Christian teachings about family values,” Vyckie Garrison, a former adherent to the Quiverfull movement, told Mic. Garrison is the founder of No Longer Quivering, a blog that serves as a “gathering place for women escaping and healing from spiritual abuse.” She believes the religious fundamentalism of the Quiverfull movement is a recipe for all kinds of domestic abuse, and sees the Duggar family’s tragedy as a “crystallization” of the hypocrisy rife within the movement.
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