victim

Another member of the Duggar family, famous for the TLC series “19 Kids and Counting,” faces allegations of child sex abuse.

Joseph Duggar, the 31-year-old son of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and the younger brother of convicted sex offender Josh Duggar, was arrested Wednesday afternoon in Arkansas by local law enforcement on suspicion of molesting a minor in Florida, the Bay County Sheriff’s Office announced in a statement. The sheriff’s office said it received a report on Wednesday of past sexual abuse allegedly involving Duggar and a 14-year-old girl. The girl alleged she was 9 years old during one of several alleged incidents, police said.

The teenager, according to law enforcement, accused Duggar of molesting her in 2020 while she was vacationing with family and staying at a residence in Panama City Beach. He is accused of touching the girl’s genitals and rubbing her thighs.

According to the statement, the victim said Duggar “eventually apologized” for the abuse, and he stopped touching her. Duggar had also “admitted his action’s to the girl’s father and to Tontitown detectives in Arkansas, Duggar’s home state, law officials said. The Tontitown Police Department confirmed Duggar’s arrest in a separate statement, noting it acted on a warrant issued by the Bay County Sheriff’s Office.

The former reality star was charged with molestation of a victim younger than 12 and “lewd and lascivious behavior conducted” by an adult. Duggar, who is currently jailed at the Washington County Detention Center, awaits extradition to Florida. He could not immediately be reached for comment.

Joseph Duggar, his parents and his siblings — whose first names also begin with the letter J — became unexpected reality TV stars with the premiere of TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting” in 2008. The series followed the giant family, highlighting their Christian fundamentalist lifestyle. The family’s once-charming facade of purity and religious devotion quickly faded in 2015 when Josh, the firstborn Duggar child, was accused of molesting five younger girls — four of whom were his sisters — when he was 15. The series was canceled that year.

In a separate case, Josh was convicted on two counts of possessing and receiving child pornography in December 2021. He was sentenced to 12 ½ years in prison in 2022. The Supreme Court rejected his efforts to appeal his case last June.

Fifteen years after the premiere of “19 Kids and Counting,” the series, the Duggar family and their devotion to the Institute in Basic Life Principles were subject to close scrutiny in the Prime Video docuseries “Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets.”

Jill Diillard, the second-eldest Duggar daughter and one of Josh’s victims, spoke out for the 2023 docuseries.

“I believe strongly that victims should always be protected. Victims should always be cared for,” she said. “You’re out there, your story’s out there. … I’d rather have some say in what that looks like.”

An eerie silence had settled.

As word evidently reached activists in the last few weeks that disturbing allegations of sexual abuse against Chicano civil rights icon Cesar Chavez were forthcoming, things started to happen without much explanation.

Groups began to cancel long-planned parades, dinners, lectures and fundraisers scheduled for Chavez’s birthday on March 31. People who I’ve known for years suddenly weren’t returning calls or texts about what was going on. Longtime defenders of Chavez — who stood by their hero even as revelations in this paper and in biographies over the past generation showed there was a dark side to the man — suddenly became hard to reach.

When the United Farm Workers and the Cesar Chavez Foundation put out statements Tuesday morning that “troubling allegations” against their patriarch were considered credible enough for them to offer help to his victims, the silence transformed into dread. There was a discomfort similar to waiting for a tsunami — that whatever was coming would change lives, shake institutions and make people question values and principles that they had long held dear.

And like a natural disaster, what emerged about Chavez was far worse than anyone could’ve expected.

Wednesday morning, the New York Times published a story where two women whose families marched alongside Chavez in the fields of California during the 1960s and 1970s disclosed that he sexually abused them for years when they were girls. Just as shocking was the revelation by Dolores Huerta, Chavez’s longtime compatriot and a civil rights legend, that he had once raped her at a time when their leadership in the fight to bring dignity to grape pickers earned national acclaim and amounted to a modern-day Via Dolorosa.

The silence has transformed into screams. Politicians and organizations that long commemorated Chavez and urged others to follow his ways are releasing statements by the minute. My social media feed is now a torrent of friends and strangers expressing empathy for Chavez’s victims and outrage, disgust and — above all — disappointment that someone considered a secular saint by many for decades turned out to be a human more terrible than anyone could’ve imagined.

There will be questions and soul-searching about these horrifying disclosures in the weeks, months and years to come. We will see a push for the renaming of the dozens of schools, parks and streets that bear Chavez’s name across the country and even the rebranding of Cesar Chavez Day, a California state holiday since 2000 devoted to urging people to give back to their communities and the least among us.

The reckoning is only right. Much of the Latino civil rights, political and educational ecosystem will have to grapple with why they held up Chavez as a paragon of virtue for too long above others just as deserving and, as it turns out, nowhere near as compromised.

In any event, the myth has been punctured.

A portrait of Cesar Chavez on a mural on Farmacia Ramirez, 2403 Cesar E Chavez Ave. in East Los Angeles.

(James Carbone / Los Angeles Times)

Chavez’s biography always reads like an entry in the “Lives of the Saints” genre of books that Catholics used to read about the holy men of their faith. The son of farmworkers who became a Mexican American Moses trying to lead his people to the promised land of equity and political power. An internationally famous leader who lived a mendicant’s life. Who devoted decades to some of the most exploited people in the American economy. Honored with awards, plays, posters. Murals, movies and monuments. President Biden even kept a bust of Chavez at his Oval Office desk.

It was a beatific reputation that largely persisted even as the union he helped to create lost its influence in the fields of California and a new generation of activists looked down on Chavez for his long-standing opposition to immigrants who came to this country to work without legal status. Admirers kept him on a pedestal even as former UFW members alleged over the last two decades that the boss they once idolized purged too many good people in the name of absolute control. The hagiography continued even as a new generation of Latinos came of age not knowing anything about him other than an occasional school lesson or television segment.

I was one of those neophytes. I first heard his name at Anaheim High School in the mid-1990s and thought my teacher was talking about Julio Cesar Chavez, the famous Mexican boxer. I was thrilled to discover that someone had bravely fought for the rights of campesinos like my mom and her sisters, who toiled in the garlic fields of Gilroy and strawberry patches of Orange County as teenage girls in the 1960s, the same time that Chavez and the UFW were enjoying their historic wins.

“Who’s Cesar Chavez?” my Mami responded when I asked if his efforts ever made her work easier.

My admiration for Chavez continued even as I learned about some of his faults. I was able to separate Chavez the man from the movement for which he was a figurehead. Long-maligned communities seek heroes to emulate, to draw hope from, to hang on their walls and share their quotes on social media. We create them even as we ignore that they’re flesh and blood just like us.

Chavez seemed like the right man at the right moment as Mexican Americans rose up like never before to battle discrimination and segregation. Now, Latinos and others who admired Chavez have to grapple with his moral failings of the worst possible magnitude at the worst possible time: when there’s an administration doing everything possible to crush Latinos and we’re looking for people to look up to like never before.

He remains one of the few Latino civil rights leaders known nationwide — and Chavez is nowhere near as known as acolytes make him out to be. Some people will argue that it’s unfair he will likely get wiped away from the public sphere while other predatory men from the past and present largely maintain their riches and reputations.

But that’s looking at the abuse revelations the wrong way. For now, I will follow what those most directly affected by Chavez’s actions are telling us to do.

The UFW and Cesar Chavez Foundation were wise to not try to defend the indefensible in their statements and instead consider any victims first before deciding how to decide what’s next for them.

The Chavez family put out a news release that states “we honor the voices of those who feel unheard and who report sexual abuse.”

Huerta wrote in an online essay: “Cesar’s actions do not reflect the values of our community and our movement. The farmworker movement has always been bigger and far more important than any one individual.”

Another of his victims told the New York Times of Chavez’s legacy: “It makes you rethink in history all those heroes. The movement — that’s the hero.”

The fountain in the Memorial Garden surrounds the gravesite of Cesar Chavez and his wife Helen Chavez at Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Keene, Calif.

(Francine Orr)

The face of that movimiento brought inspiration to millions and improved the lives of hundreds of thousands. That’s why we shouldn’t cancel the good that Chavez fought for alongside so many; we should direct the adulation he once attracted and the anger he’ll now rightfully receive toward the work that still needs to be done.

To quote an old UFW slogan that Chavez transformed into a mantra, la lucha sigue — the fight continues. It’s a statement that’s more pertinent than ever, damn its imperfect messenger.

WASHINGTON — House lawmakers were digging into Jeffrey Epstein’s sprawling financial portfolio on Wednesday as a committee deposed his former accountant and tried to understand his connections to some of the world’s wealthiest men.

Richard Kahn, who worked closely with Epstein for years and now serves as an executor of his estate, appeared for the closed-door deposition on Capitol Hill. He told lawmakers that he had not personally seen evidence of Epstein’s sexual abuse, but provided a fuller picture of how Epstein acquired his wealth. The wealthy financier made hundreds of millions of dollars over two decades, during which he struck up friendships with some of the world’s most powerful men.

Kahn “was under the impression that Epstein made his money as a tax advisor and a financial planner,” said Rep. James Comer, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee. Lawmakers argued that a fuller picture of Epstein’s finances could help the public understand how, for years, he was able to get away with trafficking and sexually abusing underage girls.

“Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring would not have been possible without Richard Kahn, who managed Epstein’s money for years, authorized payments, including payments to victims and survivors,” said Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.), who added that Kahn told them he was unable to recall details of some of the transactions and communications that he was asked about.

Kahn has said that he was unaware of Epstein’s sexual abuse and had not seen any of his victims.

Comer (R-Ky.) also said that lawmakers confirmed during the deposition that Epstein received significant amounts of money from former retail shopping chain executive Les Wexner, hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, tech entrepreneur Steven Sinofsky, investor Leon Black and the Rothschilds, a wealthy banking family.

None of those people have been accused of wrongdoing in their relationships with Epstein, but Democrats on the committee argued that anyone with ties to the wealthy financier should be scrutinized. Wexner was deposed by the committee last month, and Comer has also called on Black, among several others, to appear for transcribed interviews.

Kahn also told lawmakers that Epstein had financial ties to Ehud Barak, who was the prime minister of Israel from 1999 to 2001, according to Democratic Rep. Suhas Subramanyam. Barak has not been accused of wrongdoing and has said he regrets his friendship with Epstein.

Comer also said Wednesday that the committee has reviewed over 40,000 documents that it subpoenaed from JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. Epstein was connected to at least 64 business entities, according to Comer.

Republican President Trump has strongly denied any wrongdoing in his own ties to Epstein, and Comer said that Kahn had never seen any financial transactions between Epstein and Trump. Comer said that Kahn is the latest witness to testify that they had never seen Trump doing anything wrong with Epstein.

“The investigation’s about getting the truth to the American people, trying to figure out how the government failed, answer questions we all have,” Comer said.

Groves writes for the Associated Press.