The Duggar family has been in the news a lot lately thanks to three very-high-profile projects about the family. The latest one to drop is the new docuseries Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, in which Jill Duggar has accused her parents of pressuring her into defending her brother Josh Duggar after he molested her and her sisters. Here's what we know about what Jill says went down all those years ago.
More from Mom.com: 15 Celebrity Parents Who Decided They're One & Done
Jill opened up about what lead to the famous interview with Megyn Kelly
The mother of three was very candid in her first interviews for the series, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at the Institute of Basic Life Principles and the Duggar family, offering an explanation about why she and her sisters went on television to defend their brother Josh after the details of their sexual abuse were leaked to the press.
The original interview took place in 2015
A tearful Jill said she had forgiven Josh for his actions while being interviewed for The Kelly File not long after the world learned of the sexual abuse.
Jill was joined by Jessa for the second part in a two-part interview, and both young women shared that they had forgiven Josh for his actions.
According to Jill's new interview, that's not exactly the way things went down though.
The mother of three says she was pressured into lying
Jill didn't exactly want to appear on the show and says she felt "obligated to do it" after her father Jim Bob Duggar brought it up.
"I don't even like to talk about it because it's not something that I’m proud of," Jill recalled, according to the New York Post.
Jill says the real reason she went in front of cameras had to do more with helping the famous family save face than her actual feelings about what had happened.
Jim Bob was afraid that the news could hurt the family's chances of staying on TV
It sounds like Jill got caught up in her father's need to fix the family's image after the news got out, leaving her with no choice but to join her sisters in a public apology.
"There was an urgency in trying to figure out how the show was going to be handled in the wake of the 2015 events," she said. "As far as recovery and damage control, you just feel like a burden and the weight falls on you to help."
More from Mom.com: Celeb Dad Matthew McConaughey's Best Parenting Advice
Hopefully Jill feels better now that she's getting some of this off her chest
Jill and her sisters went through a lot. Jill's husband, Derick Dillard, even called the young women "collateral damage" when talking about the way the molestation scandal was handled at the time.
*Yikes! *
If nothing else, we hope having a chance to speak out and correct the record, so to speak, is giving the former 19 Kids and Counting star a bit of peace.
