Wednesday 25 May 2022 09:25 PM Josh Duggar is sentenced to 12 and a half years behind bars for downloading ... trends now
Josh Duggar (pictured in his December booking photo) was sentenced to 12 years and seven months behind bars Wednesday
Disgraced reality TV star Josh Duggar was jailed for 12 years and seven months on Wednesday for downloading a vile trove of 'the worst of the worst' child porn.
Judge Timothy Brooks handed the 151-month prison sentence at the John Paul Hammerschmidt federal courthouse in Fayetteville, Arkansas at the end of a day-long hearing.
Duggar, 34, has been in custody since December when a federal jury found the 19 Kids and Counting alum guilty of possession and receipt of child pornography.
A trial in Fayetteville, Arkansas heard how the dad-of-seven used the desktop computer at his car dealership to trawl the dark web for sick films including 'pedo mom' and 'play tot sweetie'.
The tech-savvy pervert downloaded a further 600 images depicting children as young as seven being raped and violently abused, the court heard.
One horrifying sequence depicted a little girl being bound, whipped with a cat o' nine tails and locked in a cage.
Members of Duggar's family, including wife Anna, 34, were seen arriving in court in Fayetteville, Arkansas for the sentencing hearing
Anna, who wore a navy blue, long sleeved dress and black mask, has stood by her husband throughout the scandal
Duggar patriarch Jim Bob Duggar (left) and siblings Joy-Anna Duggar Forsyth, 24, and Jason Duggar, 22, were also present in court Wednesday
Media and on lookers line up for entry to John Paul Hammerschmidt courthouse in Fayetteville, ahead of the decision
The cache was so disturbing that a seasoned FBI child exploitation investigator said it was 'in the top five of the worst of the worst that I've ever had to examine.'
U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks sentenced Duggar solely on the receipt charge, agreeing with both parties to vacate the possession charge as it was the lesser of the two offenses.
Defense attorneys had asked for a five-year stretch, the lightest possible punishment, insisting that Duggar, said to be a devoted dad and committed Christian, maintained his innocence and intended to appeal.
They argued that, of the hundreds of child porn images identified by investigators, only a small portion had been viewed and none of those fell into the category of 'sadistic or masochistic'.
Prosecutors demanded a 20-year term – the maximum possible – arguing that it was hard to think of anything more sadistic that a grown man raping a little girl.
To illustrate the lasting devastation done to victims of child porn, government filings presented testimony from the mother of a young girl who had appeared in one of the videos Duggar downloaded.
'My daughter is a real person,' the mother stated. 'She was horribly victimized to provide this source of 'entertainment'. She is exploited anew each and every time an image of her suffering is copied, traded or sold.
The disgraced reality TV star, 34, was found guilty on two counts of downloading and possessing child pornography in December after investigators traced a trove of the disturbing material on his work computer in an evidence photo
DailyMail.com obtained evidence photos of Duggar's office at his used car dealership business where he secretly downloaded a sick trove of child porn
This is the HP computer where Duggar secretly scoured the dark web for illegal footage of child sex abuse. On the surface, the desktop looks like a typical computer featuring a wholesome family wallpaper of father-of-seven Duggar, his wife Anna and their kids
Investigators traced child porn images to the IP address to Duggar's now-defunct used car dealership, Wholesale Motorcars, in Springdale, Arkansas, and seized his office HP desktop and iPhone in April last year
'I asked my daughter what she most wanted to ask of the judge. Her request: 'Please, don't let them pretend no-one's getting hurt!'
'She had some words for the defendant as well: 'don't you know, no one should do that to a little girl! Don't you know it hurts!'
Duggar's mom Michelle and wife Anna both wrote letters to Judge Brooks pleading for leniency, the latter comparing her husband to Ronald Reagan in an effort to stress his work ethic and decency.
'Joshua has a compassionate heart and he is willing to make personal sacrifices for the benefit of others,' Anna wrote.
'Joshua embodies the quote from Ronald Reagan: 'There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit'.
Responding, prosecutors said that Duggar's supportive family and 'privileged lifestyle' merely made his crimes 'all the more baffling'.
They argued that a 'pattern of activity enhancement' should be applied to his sentence, citing evidence from Bobby Holt, a family friend who testified about the molestation scandal that engulfed the Duggars in 2015 and led to their TLC show being canceled.
Evidence photos obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com show the trash-strewn office where Josh Duggar secretly scoured for child porn at his now-defunct used car dealership, Wholesale Motors in Springdale, Arkansas
Duggar's Apple laptop that was also seized by investigators during the raid. There was no evidence of child porn on the Macbook but it did contain backed up data from Duggar's old iPhone 8 that allowed investigators to access his old texts and pictures
Duggar's trial heard he was using a peer2peer program called uTorrent (green logo) which lets users share encrypted files behind the secrecy of the dark web\
Speaking from the witness stand at the trial, Holt choked back tears as she revealed how Duggar had confessed at age 15 to groping and penetrating his younger sisters during 'bible time' and while they slept.
The defense fought to exclude her testimony but the judge ultimately agreed that it provided important clues about his sinister appetite for minors.
'Despite achieving some level of fame through reality television as an adult, he is better known at this point for his behavior outside his family's show, including his sexual improprieties and criminal sexual conduct,'
