"19 Kids and Counting" stars, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, opened up on camera for the first time since the scandal broke out, accusing their eldest son, Josh Duggar, of molesting five underage girls, including his own little sisters, Jessa and Jill Duggar, as a teenager.
The interview, conducted by Megyn Kelly, was telecasted on Fox News on Wednesday night. During the session, the couple explained how they dealt with their teenage son, when he "tearfully" confessed them that he had "improperly touched" some of their daughters.
"We were shocked, we were devastated," said the matriarch of the hit TLC's reality TV show. "As parents we felt, we're failures."
The couple insisted that their son was too young at the time of the offense and is not a pedophile. They also declared for the first time that four of the five victims were Josh's little sisters while one was a family friend's daughter. The 27-year-old father-of-three was "curious about girls" when he was 14 and had admittedly touched the victims over their clothes while they slept.
The Duggars couple also disclosed that Josh committed the offense multiple times, even after his first confession to his parents. Eventually they send him to a non-professional Christian-based counseling program in Little Rock, Ark, as they thought it to be the best solution at the time.
Further in the interview, the Duggars couple counter-accused the media for obtaining police records illegally and exposing the decade old sealed juvenile records, which not only tainted the reputation of their son, but also affected the life of the victims.
The scandal broke out on May 21, when InTouch magazine broke the story and published the police reports, which they claimed they have obtained through Freedom Of Information Act, USA Today reported.
Following the public uproar, TLC has pulled the show from its schedule, but Huffington Post claimed that the channel is yet to take the final decision on the fate of the show.