A Florida judge on Tuesday set $600,000 bond for accused child molester Joseph Duggar and forbid him to have unsupervised contact with anyone under age 18.
The remand came two days after the 31-year-old reality star submitted a written plea of not guilty and demanded a jury trial, eschewing an arraignment, according to People. Duggar is charged with lewd and lascivious molestation of a victim less than 12 years old and lewd and lascivious behavior conducted by a person 18 years or older for allegedly inappropriately touching a 9-year-old girl during a family vacation back in 2020.
The member of Duggar family, onetime reality TV stars of “19 Kids and Counting,” had been arrested March 18 in Tontitown, Arkansas, where the family lives. The charges stemmed from a family vacation in Panama City Beach, Florida, during which Duggar allegedly fiddled with the victim’s underwear and grazed her genitals on several occasions as they sat together on a couch, covered with a blanket, the Bay County Sheriff’s Office in Florida said at the time. The victim says he later apologized and stopped doing it.
Earlier this month, the accuser’s father confronted Duggar and said he got him to admit to the abuse. Tontitown police then had the father call Duggar with a detective on the line, and he repeated the confession. Police interviewed the girl, who is now 14, and she described how Duggar had groomed her by first having her sit on his lap, then moving on to inappropriate touching.
Duggar waived extradition and was held in solitary confinement in Arkansas for nine days before being transferred to Florida, where he was booked into custody at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to documents obtained by People. He appeared in court remotely from Bay County Jail a few hours later and is scheduled to return on April 20.
With News Wire Services